


The Darkartian Penance

by AconitumNapellus



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Angst, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Prison, Psychological Trauma, Rape, Stockholm Syndrome, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 14:48:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 53,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19466230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AconitumNapellus/pseuds/AconitumNapellus
Summary: Spock is imprisoned on an alien planet for crimes committed by the Federation. While there, he is subjected to horrific abuse.Okay, here's the deal. I wrote this many years ago, and posted it on fannation under a different name. Now fannation doesn't exist, and people have wanted to be able to read it, so I'm finally putting it on here. I write very dark things sometimes when I'm in very dark places, and god, this is dark. It is very heavy, and basically is just full of rape and torture and psychological torture. It is an utter angst-fest. I'm sure the story has multiple issues, but I wrote it so long ago I don't remember the details any more. It's done, it's dusted, and now it's on here. Be aware if you read it that it is very, very heavy.





	1. Chapter 1

Three columns of scintillating light appeared in a courtyard crowded with great, colourful planters and abstract sculptures. The golden sparkles coalesced until they showed the outlines of three figures, which rapidly solidified into a human in gold, another in blue, and a dark-haired Vulcan also in blue.

‘Interesting,’ Spock murmured as the beam released him, looking sideways at Kirk.

‘You could say that,’ McCoy said sarcastically, glancing with disdain at the closest sculpture. ‘Looks like two Andorian eels mating, if you ask me. Good God, we could’ve been beamed into the middle of one of those disgusting things!’

‘Bones,’ Kirk said quickly. ‘This is a diplomatic visit, remember. The Federation have had no contact with the Darkartians in four years.’

‘Yeah, and we all know why that is,’ McCoy grumbled in a low voice. ‘Two hundred of their people get killed by a crazed ship captain. No wonder they haven’t wanted to talk to us until now.’

‘However, they do now, Doctor. That is the important fact,’ Spock said over his shoulder as he wandered across the courtyard to examine a particularly interesting looking bloom. ‘This is our first chance to renew relations with the Darkartians – it would be a pity if you spoiled it by criticising their artistic taste.’

‘So where are they?’ McCoy pointed out acerbically. ‘Can’t renew relations if they don’t even turn up. Mind, if they had been in this teeny space we might’ve been sharing molecules with them…’

It happened so quickly that afterwards Kirk couldn’t be sure what happened first. He was only aware of hearing a sudden long roar like an animal crazed with fury, and Spock whipping round to face a team of three Darkartian men holding some kind of weapons. They threw a metallic disc at Spock that latched onto his uniform shirt, then turned to Kirk and McCoy who were standing further away on the other side of the courtyard. Kirk snapped open his communicator the moment he realised what was happening, snapping, ‘Scotty, emergency beam up!’ and the courtyard disappeared around him.

He reformed in the transporter room gazing around himself wildly, snapping, ‘Bones, Spock, are you all right?’

‘Jim, Spock – ’ McCoy hissed, and Kirk realised that there was only the two of them on the transporter platform. Spock was nowhere to be seen.

‘Captain, he just disappeared off the tracking sensors,’ Scotty was explaining, still working uselessly at the transporter controls. ‘If I canna sense him I cannae beam him up.’

‘They attached something to him, some device,’ Kirk remembered, striding across the room to the communicator. ‘Uhura, get me the Darkartian government, now!’ he snapped into the communicator.

‘Right away, sir.’ There was a long pause, then Uhura’s voice said apologetically. ‘All communications channels are non-responsive, sir. They won’t reply to my hails.’

Kirk shot a glance at McCoy, then turned to the door and ran for the bridge, McCoy following him as quickly as possible. As they entered the bridge Uhura turned to him with a bewildered expression, saying, ‘We were just sent this packet, sir. Putting it onscreen.’

Kirk stalked to the rail and leant on it, eyes intent on the viewscreen. The image of the Darkartian Ambassador appeared, saying stonily, ‘We have remanded one Starfleet officer in custody in connection with the Veradan Massacre of 2263. The charges are trespass, murders numbering two hundred and sixty-three Darkartian citizens, causing grievous physical harm, criminal damage, avoiding trial. Your officer is a member of Starfleet and so deemed to be representative of Starfleet’s crimes. He is sentenced to life imprisonment. Any other Starfleet member found in Darkartian territory will be subject to the same sentence.’

Ice water seemed to sink through Kirk’s veins.

‘Uhura, get me Command,’ he said tightly, moving down to his chair at the centre of the bridge.

  


((O))

  


Dazed and confused, Spock found himself standing in an office room somewhere in the Darkartian capital, armed guards still surrounding him with their weapons pointed at his chest. He had beamed down without a phaser, expecting nothing more hazardous than an encounter with diplomats, but he was searched thoroughly anyway, his captors removing his communicator and smashing it on the ground before him. In his initial attempt to fight off his attackers he had been struck hard over the skull with something, and now his head sang with dizzy pain. He was aware of being handcuffed, and manhandled on foot to this office, but had barely managed to notice the route here, despite his attempts to memorise it.

He stood before a Darkartian official who was sitting casually at a desk, pad in hand, reading finely typed details that had obviously been prepared even before the team from the  _Enterprise_ had beamed down. He thought he could feel a trickle of blood running down his face where he had been hit, but it seemed prudent not to raise his cuffed hands to check. He stood quietly as his hands were released and the transporter blocking device was removed from him, allowing himself some relief at this small measure of freedom.

‘Can you tell me why I have been apprehended?’ he began cautiously, wary of inciting any harsher treatment than that he had already been subjected to. ‘If you would contact my ship I’m sure they will be able to straighten out any problems.’

The man behind the desk didn’t reply. He carried on reading for another few minutes, then meticulously filled a long form in, and passed it into some kind of electronic filing system. Eventually he looked up briefly at Spock before referring back to his information on the pad.

‘Commander Spock, _Enterprise_. You are a member of Starfleet, and as such are judged to be complicit in the Veradan Massacre of 2265. You are sentenced to life imprisonment in a top security facility.’

That proclamation hit Spock like a blow, but he kept his face composed. ‘Sir, I have never before set foot on Darkartia Prime. How can I be complicit in an act committed by someone else?’

‘The act was committed by a representative of Starfleet. You are also a representative of Starfleet.’

Spock raised one eyebrow, acknowledging the logic of the situation. It was not uncommon in the history of justice to punish one member of a group for an act committed by another. He could only be relieved that he had seen Jim and McCoy beam up to safety before he had been dragged away. But he had not even been before a judge – this was surely not the end of the matter. He asked, ‘I will have a chance to present my defence?’

‘There is no defence,’ the man said stonily. He turned to the guards. ‘Transport him to Facility 2719.’

Spock opened his mouth to protest, but as he did the room dissolved around him, and he found himself standing alone in a silent white chamber the size of a shower cubicle. A disembodied voice said tonelessly, ‘Strip. Put your clothes in the chute.’

As he hesitated the voice continued, ‘Obey, or be punished.’

Spock raised one eyebrow, then began to peel his uniform shirt over his head. He was not in control. It was useless to fight. Surely at some point soon the ship would open communications with the Darkartian government, and proceedings would begin to free him. Up until that point it was best to keep a low profile.

He slowly removed his clothes, piece by piece, folding them by habit as he went. When he was naked he picked up the neat pile, together with his boots, and dropped them into the hole that had opened in the right wall. He forced himself to suppress the unease he felt at his nudity in such a threatening situation. Presumably at some point his uniform would be replaced with some kind of prisoner’s outfit.

‘Arms above your head, legs apart,’ the voice demanded, and as Spock obeyed a fine mist of liquid began to spray around him, covering his entire body. His nostrils twitched as the harsh disinfectant scent settled around him, and the final residues of liquid drained away through imperceptible holes in the floor. He waited a brief few seconds, then a double-skinned door opened before him, and a dour-faced man in a pale blue tunic beckoned him through. He looked Spock’s naked body up and down with interest as he stepped into the cold room, perhaps noticing the similarities between Darkartian and Vulcan biology. Spock could not help but drop his gaze in response to the intensity of the scrutiny. He had never stood naked like this in front of a stranger before, and he did not enjoy it. It made him feel curiously vulnerable.

The man took a final look, then simply said, ‘Sit.’ It was the same voice as in the chamber.

Spock moved to the austere, low-backed metal chair that he was gestured to, and sat down, ignoring the chill in his naked thighs and back. The man silently closed metal clips that restrained Spock’s wrists to the chair arms, raised a vertical bar behind him with a collar on it that held his neck still, then disappeared behind his back without a word. The next knowledge Spock had of what was happening was when he heard a low buzzing from behind him, then felt the sensation of an electric razor being passed over his head. He sat stoically as it passed over the area where he had been struck earlier, although there was obviously a sizeable and painful bump developing. He watched his dark hair falling around him, until his scalp had been shaved smooth. There was another moment’s pause, and then something touched his left shoulder blade and clicked, and he felt a burning sensation in his skin. The man moved around to the front of him and pressed the same device over his left pectoral muscle, and he looked down as it was removed to see large Darkartian numbers tattooed onto his chest, the black marks surrounded by an irritated green welt. Then a small subcutaneous transponder was injected into his upper arm. The man glanced at a computer screen, and said, ‘Spock, Commander, Starfleet. From now on you will be known as 2719-614F. Remember.’

Spock nodded mutely, disturbingly chilled by his sudden loss of identity. His restraints were clicked open, and he put his hands together in his lap, rubbing his wrists discreetly. He clenched his jaw, trying to resist the urge to shiver. Obviously Darkartian environmental settings were nowhere close to the warmth needed for Vulcan comfort.

‘Starfleet,’ the man muttered, glancing at him disdainfully. ‘You murder hundreds, then believe you can open relations as if nothing has happened. Well, you’ll suffer now. You pious Vulcans, and any other Starfleet stupid enough to come here. Do you even know what humility is?’

Spock did not reply, certain that a detailed explanation of the dictionary definition of humility would not be welcomed. The man was fairly radiating contempt and repressed anger from his unshielded mind, despite his obvious attempts to control it.

‘Well, you’ll learn it, prisoner,’ the man said ominously. ‘You’ll be brought to your knees here, trust me – and further down than that, too.’

Spock blinked slowly, trying to suppress the sense of foreboding that statement conjured. He could do nothing about his situation except perhaps learn a little more about it.

‘Where is this facility located?’ he asked curiously.

There was no reply.

He tried again, asking this time, ‘Do I have any rights to contact my relatives or friends? They do not know I am here.’

‘You have no rights,’ the man said, without looking at him. ‘You are a prisoner. You are given a cell only in order to sustain your miserable existence, because you do not have the right to choose death. From now on you will not look directly at your superiors. You will not express personal thoughts, feelings or desires. You will not speak of your former life or associates. You will not speak without being spoken to, and you will append your sentences with the word _sir_. If you do not obey these strictures, you will be punished. If you are punished, you may find yourself back here requiring treatment, and I want to see your filthy hide as little as possible. Do you understand?’

Spock paused a moment, then nodded, and said quietly, ‘Yes, sir.’

The man glanced again at his computer. ‘You’re a telepath, aren’t you?’ he asked.

‘Yes, sir,’ Spock nodded apprehensively.

‘If you ever attempt to use your telepathy on a member of staff or inmate, that part of your brain will be lobotomised, regardless of the consequences of that operation to yourself. Do you understand that?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Spock said again, trying to suppress the sick sense of fear that that promise brought to his stomach.

‘Stand here,’ the man said shortly, pointing at a spot just in front of him.

Spock rose and moved over to him, fighting his normal habit of looking directly at his interlocutor and gazing remotely at the left shoulder of his blue tunic. The man picked up a datapadd and stood scanning its contents.

‘I am required to give you an official reading of the rules. They will not be repeated. You will remember them.’

‘Of course,’ Spock said matter-of-factly, then quickly added, ‘sir,’ as the man levelled a hard glare at him.

The man looked back to his padd, and began to recite in a droning voice, ‘Personal deportment: No talking to, meeting the eyes of, or otherwise communicating with other prisoners. No smiling or laughing at any time. No singing or producing any other noise for the purpose of self-amusement. No running at any time. No playing of games, dancing, or exercise outside of the exercise period. No masturbation, or touching yourself in an inappropriate fashion. No kind of noise apart from that necessary to your basic mode of living. You will not acquire possessions of any kind.

‘Interaction with staff: You shall not initiate any conversation. All prison staff shall be answered respectfully and addressed as _sir_. If you need to speak to a member of staff you will raise your hand and wait until spoken to. You shall not raise your hand unless for a matter of grave importance. You shall not raise your eyes to your superiors. You shall not turn your back to your superiors. You shall not speak of any matter relating to the time before your confinement or anything outside of the prison. You will remember that ownership of your person lies with the prison, and will submit to all commands given. Violence towards prison staff will result in _severe_ repercussions.

‘Personal health and hygiene: You will always consume all nourishment provided, regardless of personal preference. You will defecate only in the container provided. You will sleep only in your sleeping area. At shower time you will wash yourself thoroughly, paying particular attention to armpit and groin areas. For the first five showers you will be subject to inspection afterwards to ensure cleanliness. At grooming time you will kneel and submit to shaving and nail-clipping in silence. Once a year you will be subject to a comprehensive medical and dental inspection – resistance will result in the inspection being made under paralysis. Failure to adhere to any of these rules will result in punishment. Do you understand?’

Spock could not but help a building dread inside himself at this list of restrictions. He was used to a large amount of freedom even within his job, and to almost never-ending variety of intellectual stimulation. Here, evidently, there would be nothing. And, worst of all, he was totally helpless to protest his captivity. He could do nothing but trust Starfleet to secure his release – but he was in no way certain that that would happen. Diplomatic relations with Darkartia were fragile and important, and his was only one life. The logical reaction was to do nothing.

He had obviously hesitated for too long. Without warning the man touched something to his exposed flank. Pain seared through him from the point of contact, the shock of it taking his breath away and causing his knees to fold underneath him. He gasped, trying to blink vision back into his eyes, then clambered back to his feet, struggling to hide his reaction. His eyes fell on a baton that the man was replacing at his hip. It was only a little over an inch wide, and less than a foot long, but the pain it had meted out was almost unbelievable.

‘Do you understand?’ the man snapped again, and Spock blinked, nodding quickly.

‘Yes, I understand, sir,’ he said quietly.

‘Lie on the table.’

Spock moved to a medical table made of the same bare metal as the chair he had been shackled to. His wrists were restrained by manacles on short chains attached to the bed. The aftershocks of the pain were still throbbing through him, but he strove to show no signs. He lay passively, masking his feelings, as the man pulled on a pair of thin rubber gloves and subjected him to a meticulous fingertip inspection of his entire body and all of its cavities. The man took a device that he held over the Starfleet transponder in Spock’s arm, removing it painlessly. Then he touched it to the spot behind his ear where his universal translator sat, saying flatly, ‘There are automatic translators in the prison. You won’t need – ’

His voice slipped into a language meaningless to Spock, and he closed his eyes briefly, resigned to the fact that for now he would be cut off from any meaningful communication. The examination continued for a few more minutes, then the man spoke into a wall communicator, and Spock again felt the world around him dissolve and reassemble into a stark white cell, seven feet by six.

  


((O))

  


‘What do you mean, _the Darkartians are within their rights_?’ Kirk asked incredulously. He was trying hard to restrain himself from hitting the communications screen, for all the good that would do. He was well aware that McCoy was bouncing on his toes in frustration behind him, out of view of the camera. It had taken two hours to get a proper response from Starfleet Command, and only now, in his quarters late at night, was he finally engaged in discussion with the head of Interplanetary Relations, Commodore Freeland.

‘Starfleet has always admitted itself responsible for the Veradan Massacre,’ the Commodore said patiently. ‘If under Darkartian law any member of Starfleet can be held accountable, we can’t do anything about it. Commander Spock was arrested in Darkartian Territory.’

‘Commander Spock was _kidnapped_ ,’ Kirk snapped back furiously. ‘He was assaulted and kidnapped. We all would have been if they’d had a chance. Can’t you negotiate with them?’

‘We have already exchanged a communiqué with the Darkartian government. Their claim on Commander Spock stands perfectly well under their laws.’

‘And what about _our_ laws?’ Kirk raged. ‘What about laws that say you have to have actually committed a crime to be punished for it? That say you can’t be held criminally responsible for the actions of a member of your family or species or social group?’

‘Commander Spock was arrested in Darkartian Territory,’ Freeland repeated calmly. ‘Captain Kirk, are you aware of the size of the Darkartian fleet? Are you familiar with their range of weaponry?’

Kirk fumed silently, trying to sound more calm as he said, ‘I understand that the Darkartians would make a formidable enemy. But that isn’t an excuse for condemning an innocent man to life imprisonment, surely? Couldn’t diplomatic channels – ’

‘ You have to understand, Captain Kirk, that some fights are just not winnable,’ Freeland cut across him, his seemingly inexhaustible patience slipping a little.

‘He’s my First Officer! He’s my friend…’

Kirk trailed off hopelessly. He was going to get no help here.

‘We are in the process of assigning you a replacement science officer, and recommend the promotion of Commander Scott to First Officer at the present time. As for the fact that he’s your friend – I’m sorry, but this is why Fleet discourages personal relationships between crew.’

Kirk sighed, clenching and unclenching his fists in frustration.

‘Can you at least tell me where he’s being held?’ he asked, trying at a more conciliatory tone. ‘Can I at least speak to him?’

‘Federation Consular services on Pinar 3 are attempting to make contact with Commander Spock, but they have been told he’s in a top security unit and isn’t allowed to communicate with anyone outside the prison. And no, Captain Kirk, I can’t tell you where he’s being held – not with your reputation for rushing in over the top of the Prime Directive and stirring up trouble. We will not risk war with the Darkartians. You are _not_ – I repeat _not_ – to attempt a rescue. The matter is out of your hands.’

‘You _know_?’ Kirk asked incredulously. ‘You _know_ where he is and you won’t tell me?’

‘I have told you everything I can. Commodore Freeland out.’

As the screen darkened Kirk finally gave in to his impulses, and smacked his hand furiously into the console.

‘Well, Jim?’ McCoy asked from behind him. ‘What are you going to do?’

Kirk jumped. He had forgotten that the doctor was there.

‘I – don’t know, Bones,’ he said tiredly. ‘Without Fleet behind us, without risking our jobs, our lives, this entire ship...’

‘And what about Spock’s life?’ McCoy asked with unrestrained anger. ‘What, do they just let him rot down there? Do we sit back and let that happen?’

‘I have _absolutely_ no intention of letting Spock rot down there,’ Kirk said in a grim tone. ‘But we’re going to have to at least _appear_ to be doing it their way.’ He met McCoy’s eyes briefly. ‘We’ll get him out, Bones. It might just take some time, that’s all. It looks like that’s the one thing that Spock’s got at the moment.’

Then he turned back to his desk and switched the computer unit back on, beginning to trail through the  _Enterprise_ ’s planned schedule, working out when they would again be closest to Darkartia Prime. The next job would be to start ferreting out information on where Darkartia’s top security prisons were located, and which one Spock was most likely to have been sent to.

  


((O))

  


Spock waited.

He waited for the first few hours for someone to come to the cell, to tell him that the mistake had been rectified, and that he would be beamed back to his ship immediately. He waited to see someone, anyone, who worked in this place, to repeat his request to contact his people. He waited for someone to bring some kind of furnishings or clothing to his stark, empty cell. He waited to be able to request to empty his toilet pot, or the chance to speak to any of the other prisoners, or simply ask for a drink of water.

He was left in isolation only for the first eight days, but it took weeks for Commander Spock to accustom himself to the barbarity of his captivity. The primitive conditions somehow seemed more barbaric due to the slick modernity of the materials and technology. The door was a forcefield that was impenetrable to prisoners but non-existent to guards. He had learnt in the first few days that touching the field led to searing pain and lengthy unconsciousness. The corridor he was in held many of these doors, staggered so they were not quite opposite each other – but even though the forcefield was see-through straight on, it was opaque at an angle, so he could not even see the face of the prisoner opposite. There was also evidently a sound dampner in the field, making it impossible to hear anything outside of his own cell. The list of rules made the silence even more complete – he could not even drum his fingers on the floor to relieve the monotony. He assumed there were hidden cameras or sensors in the cell, because the first rule that he broke brought a jolt of searing pain from the floor of the cell and into his lower legs, making him collapse on the ground, gasping for breath. In this way he gradually learned precisely what was and was not permitted.

The walls and floor of the cell were composed of some kind of shining, brilliantly white material that admitted no stains, no dirt to stick. But there was no bed, nor even blankets in the cold room – just a section by the wall where the floor was made of a softer, rubberised white material. He still had no clothes – his prisoner designation was simply tattooed onto his skin, matching the number written above the cell door outside, and that was enough. There was no toilet – just a glimmering white pot with no lid. There was no washbasin – but every eight days, at a time Spock had designated 0600 hours, a blasting cold mixture of water and soap sprayed from a nozzle in the ceiling, lasting for precisely seven minutes, during which Spock washed as swiftly as possible. He then spent the remainder of the time huddling in the corner of the cell trying to preserve his body heat, until hot fans sprung into action to dry cell and prisoner simultaneously.

The cell was scrupulously clean, but the pot in the corner stank, emptied only every eight days when it was beamed out before the shower and returned clean half an hour later. It was light, but the bright light never dimmed or faltered, reflecting mercilessly off every surface whatever the time of day or night. It was warm enough, to Darkartian standards, but not warm enough to prevent Spock having to spend most of his time actively fighting to retain his body heat. He was fed, the dish being beamed into the cell twice a day, but the food was cold, watery, monotone gruel that provided nourishment and liquid both, with none of the relief of a clear glass of water, or food that he could chew or taste. He suspected that meat made up a certain proportion of the gruel. For the first few weeks it made him nauseous and gave him diarrhoea, causing him to drop weight rapidly. But he knew that any complaint would not be permitted, and that to refuse to eat would be to be punished and to starve or be force-fed, so he carried on eating it, waiting for his body to adjust.


	2. Chapter 2

It was nine weeks into his captivity, and Spock sat huddled in his sleeping area with his arms around his knees, unfocussed eyes directed at the floor. It was the period between 2200 and 2300 hours, which Spock had self-designated as the time for reviewing mathematical principles. He had found after the first few days that such discipline was needed to prevent time and days from slipping into an endless nothingness. The boredom was enough to drive him insane, and the only way to cope with it was to give himself something to structure his days by. The eight-day shower cycle gave him the ability to split time into a week of sorts, each day being named after a different ship of the fleet. Tomorrow would be  _Enterprise_ -day, and on the day after,  _Farragut_ -day, the shower would blast him awake in the morning. Every four eight-day cycles he knelt in the centre of his cell while his head was shaven to baldness again and his finger- and toe-nails were clipped – that gave him a month. The day split neatly enough into a twenty-five hour cycle, the Darkartian rotation being twenty-four point nine standard hours long, 0700 hours being breakfast time, and 1900 being dinner – there was no midday meal. He forced himself to sleep between 2300 and 0630, except on  _Farragut_ -day, when he lost half an hour of sleep to the shower. He meditated between 0800 and 1000. There was planned activity each day between 1200 and 1800, when prisoners walked silently to a cavernous white room to walk in an unending, monotonous circle, eyes focussed on the floor, mouth shut, hands at the sides. The other hours Spock organised into different subjects for contemplation, and rigidly stuck to those subjects, no matter how he felt about them. It was the only way to cling onto some sense of time and purpose in this place.

Movement caught Spock’s eye. He glanced up very slightly to see booted feet outside, halted outside his cell. The guard stepped inside. Spock sighed, straightening into a more respectful posture. He was partway through his review of T’Shel’s four-dimensional geometry, and he was growing increasingly intolerant of any disturbance to his routine – it was the only thing that he owned.

‘Prisoner 2719-614F,’ the guard said, gazing at the number on his chest. ‘Life sentence, isn’t it? Implication in mass murder.’

Spock clambered to his feet, keeping his head lowered as he murmured, ‘Yes, sir.’

It was unusual to have a guard come into the cell. He had barely exchanged a word with any other being in the nine weeks he had been here. He wasn’t sure whether to be apprehensive or intrigued.

‘I suppose you will have heard of me,’ the man said with a silky cockiness. ‘Oh – no – I forgot prisoners are forbidden to interact with each other.’

Spock merely glanced at him warily. He had been taught by the painsticks not to look the guards directly in the eye, to do all he could to prevent them noticing if he was taller than them, to keep his stance passive and append every sentence with  _sir_ . It was logical to avoid such pain. He had also noticed how the other prisoners looked at this one as he passed – some with fear, some with naked hatred, some with something that looked like shame. Guards had no name badges, and never gave up their names to anyone, so Spock had designated this one Tilt-nose, for the odd angle of his nose to his face. Perhaps it had been broken at some point. He looked the type to engage in violence – muscular, large, with an odd look of unpredictability in his eyes. His unwashed hair was ragged and unkempt, his face pitted with old acne scars, but he walked and spoke as if he knew he was the most handsome, most desirable person on the planet.

The guard moved to the forcefield, put his hand through to the controls, and turned a dial. The clear shimmering barrier slowly clouded to an opaque white. Spock stepped backwards unobtrusively until he was touching the wall of the cell, wary of what may be about to happen. He had seen prisoners with bruising and other injuries, and knew of no way for them to acquire those injuries except by way of the guards. He knew the forcefield was soundproof. Now no one would be able to see what was happening to him either.

Tilt-nose turned back to him, looking him up and down, his eyes lingering on the area at the base of his pelvis. Spock had to fight to keep his hands passively at his sides, not move them to shield himself from inspection. He had gradually grown used to the nudity – every other prisoner was as starkly naked as he – but he could not grow to be comfortable with it before the staring eyes of strangers and in front of the clothed presence of the guards. He suddenly felt intensely, vulnerably naked, standing against the cell wall in front of this man in heavy boots, thick black trousers and dark, long-sleeved shirt. There was no room in this tiny cell for evasion.

‘Have you heard of me?’ the guard asked softly, stepping closer.

‘No, sir,’ Spock said, trying to keep his voice calm and level. He spoke so little that his own voice sounded strange in his ears.

‘You haven’t heard any talk in the exercise room, then?’

‘It is forbidden to speak in the exercise room, sir,’ Spock replied calmly. He felt anything but calm.

‘Oh, I know it’s forbidden,’ Tilt-nose said, laughing softly. ‘But prisoners so often do what is forbidden – that’s why they’re here, you know.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Spock nodded. ‘However, I have not heard of you, sir.’

‘Oh, well, let me teach you then,’ he smiled, moving closer, closer, until he was standing directly in front of Spock, his face only inches from Spock’s own. ‘You are going to do exactly as I instruct you,’ he whispered softly, leaning even closer to be sure he was heard.

Spock didn’t reply. He had no idea what he should say in response to that direction that had every air of a threat. He swallowed silently, resisting the overriding impulse to slide sideways away from this man.

‘Do you need a piss?’ Tilt-nose asked casually.

‘No, sir,’ Spock said, trying to sound normal, but the words almost dried up in his throat. There was something about this line of questioning that made him intensely nervous.

Tilt-nose fingered his painstick. It was a device that only worked on prisoners, so there was no danger of it being used against him.

‘I would like you to be sure,’ he said softly. ‘I like my prisoners to be – comfortable. Go and take a piss, now.’

He began to raise the painstick, and Spock moved away from him with cautious steps, going to the pot in the corner and forcing himself to urinate into it.

‘Anything else?’ Tilt-nose asked, coming up behind him. Spock could feel his breath on the back of his neck. ‘You don’t want a shit?’

Spock could feel the muscles of his back clenching into a rigid sheet. ‘No, sir.’

‘You’re sure?’ Tilt-nose stroked Spock’s bare flank menacingly with the side of the painstick.

‘Yes, sir,’ Spock nodded, staring down into the contents of the pot. It looked fresh enough. He could imagine little worse than being forced to squat over the pot and defecate in front of this man. His privacy had already been broken down enough. ‘I have recently been, sir,’ he lied.

‘I see. And is your ass clean?’

‘As clean as possible, sir,’ Spock whispered. He was beset with confusion.

The man felt in his pocket, and drew out a disposable wipe. ‘Clean it.’

Spock took the damp cloth hesitantly and used it to carefully clean himself. The relief of the feeling of cleanliness was far outweighed by his discomfort at the situation he was in. He folded the cloth, and dropped it into the toilet pot.

‘Good. Now kneel down.’

Spock glanced up just long enough to let his eyes fall on the painstick, then sank slowly to his knees. Tilt-nose casually pushed his boot into the gap between his knees, forcing them a little wider. Spock complied silently, and the guard stood back. He regarded Spock slowly, letting his eyes move up and down his body. Spock could not help but tense up in reaction. He was aware that his hands were shaking where they hung at his sides, and the only way he could stop them would be to clench them into fists, an action that might provoke punishment.

The man’s gaze continued to burn onto him with a disturbing intensity. Spock felt almost as if he was being touched by his hands. The one indignity that he had largely managed to avoid since the initial medical inspection was being touched by another person.

Tilt-nose smiled, bringing his eyes back to Spock’s face.

‘So here’s the proud Vulcan, on his knees before his inferior. The logical Vulcan, trembling with emotion. The private Vulcan, stripped naked in front of me. I hear Vulcans keep their sexual practices so guarded that no outworlder has knowledge of them. That they avoid physical contact, and show themselves naked to almost no one. That they show themselves in heat only to one supremely trusted individual. And here you are, stripped of everything.’

Spock kept his head tilted towards the floor. Something in the way the guard spoke sent thrills of fear racing through him, despite every attempt to control.

‘You’re a half-breed, aren’t you?’ the man asked, kicking his knee lightly to secure his attention.

‘Yes, sir,’ Spock nodded.

He had to close his eyes to try to control his surging emotions. He hated this. He hated his servile position, his vulnerability, his helplessness. Despite his weight loss and the wasting of his muscles he was certainly strong enough to hold out against this man, but he dared not. Every fibre of his being wanted him to try to fight his way away from this situation, and he could not let himself move.

‘Well, that could be interesting. I could have fun finding out where the flaws lie. Put your hands behind your back.’

As Spock hesitated, the painstick flashed out, and searing jolts of pain tore through his left arm. He slumped momentarily, and before he could recover Tilt-nose had come round behind him and snapped security cuffs onto his wrists.

‘I  _told_ you to do exactly as I instruct you,’ he said menacingly as he bent to apply similar cuffs to Spock’s naked ankles. He flinched, not so much at the cold metal, but at the utter helplessness to which he had just been lowered. He cast his eyes about the cell in desperation, but there was nothing but white walls and the opaque, sound-proof screen across the doorway. Spock straightened his shoulders and lifted his head, waiting for the inevitable beating. He could do nothing but endure it.

His heart stuttered as his gaze fell on the guard standing before him. His hands were at his waistband, opening the fastening there. Only now did he notice the turgid bulge in the material, waiting to be released. Panic settled down over him like a cold drench, and he moved almost without being aware of the impulse, clumsily throwing himself across the room and finding himself brought to the floor by his fettered limbs. Then Tilt-nose was holding him by his ears, dragging him back to the centre of the room and back to his position on his knees.

There was nothing to be gained by clinging to his dignity.

‘Please, no,’ he began, lifting his face to the guard. ‘Please, please, don’t – ’

A blow to the side of his face sent him reeling half into unconsciousness.

‘ _Sir_ ,’ Tilt-nose roared, striking him again on the other side of his face. ‘ _Sir_ .’

‘Sir… Please, sir, please do not do this to me…’ Spock whispered, although the certainty was settling on him like a lead weight. Tilt-nose was not the type to listen to pleading.

The man’s fingers were gripping painfully into his ears, and suddenly they snapped his head backwards, forcing his mouth open by the movement. Before he could react Tilt-nose had forced some kind of hard ring into his mouth, setting it behind his teeth so he could not shake it free or spit it out. He took out a small clip and forced it onto Spock’s nose, blocking his nostrils. Spock knelt, stunned, his eyes focussed desperately on the ceiling above as if some help would come from that quarter. He could not understand what was about to happen, but he was sure that it would be an experience that he had not the resources to cope with.

In one desperate effort he put every ounce of strength into bracing his arms, trying vainly to snap the bonds from his wrists, but he only succeeded in cutting and bruising his own flesh. He felt something give in his wrist, and he stopped struggling as pain pulsed up his arm and down into his fingers. He fought to close his mouth, to crush the metal ring, but he hadn’t the strength. He pulled a well-used mantra into his mind –  _the body is insignificant_ – and kept repeating it to himself, trying to draw himself away from the fear. But that was a mantra to deal with pain, not with sexual humiliation. It was something too connected with his mind to ignore.

He heard a soft laugh, and let his eyes fall on Tilt-nose. He was still standing before him, one hand coaxing his veined, erect shaft from his trousers, stroking it with a bizarre tenderness. As was normal for Darkartians, it was slightly longer and thicker than either a human or Vulcan erection. Spock stared at the blood-flushed organ as if he had never seen such a thing before. He never had, in this context, so close to his face that he could smell it through the air in his mouth, could feel the heat radiating from it. The smell increased as Tilt-nose lovingly rolled back his foreskin, exposing the soft head. Spock uttered some frantic noise of protest through the gag, but even he was unsure what he was trying to say.

‘Oh, I’m going to enjoy you, boy,’ the guard said softly, stroking his hand over Spock’s shaven scalp with a terrifying tenderness. Spock blinked at the mental emanations that brushed at his mind through the light touch. He couldn’t quite read the man’s intentions, but the general thrust of the emotions were such that they made him feel nauseous. He tried again instinctively to plead for mercy, but the sounds he uttered were formless and horrible to his ears.

‘You don’t like to be touched, do you, boy?’ Tilt-nose asked him, tracing a finger across Spock’s cheek, catching his nail in a week’s growth of stubble.

Spock shook his head silently. Even if he could speak, he did not think he could voice the distaste he felt about being touched by strangers. Tilt-nose stroked his finger up to the tip of one of his ears, and he shivered at the sensations the touch provoked. The finger toyed at his stretched, gaping lips, then reached in and stroked across his tongue. Then Tilt-nose moved his hips to brush the tip of his penis across Spock’s cheek, leaving a trail of fluid across his skin.

‘We’ll have to wean you out of that,’ he said. ‘There’ll be plenty of touching from now on.’

Suddenly he clamped his hands to the back of Spock’s head, forcing it forwards against his straining resistance. A flood of violent emotions battered his mind through the man’s grip. He suddenly understood the guard’s precise intentions, and they horrified him. Spock let his eyes unfocus, trying desperately to abstract himself from what was happening. He began to go through T’Shel’s first laws.

 _A straight line on one plane cannot intersect itself until acted upon by space-time._ _The opposite sides of a perfect circle cannot intersect one another until acted upon by space-time…_

It was no use. Far from being able to cut himself off from his senses, time seemed to slow down. He felt the tip of the guard’s penis brush past his lips and slide through the ring holding his mouth open. He tasted the fluid that had pooled at the tip as it trailed over his tongue. He tasted the salty, urine-tainted skin of the head, the nauseating unwashed secretions around the ridge. He felt the heat of the hard flesh as it slid deeper, catching on his teeth, and felt the pulsing of the veins beneath the skin. It slid further, until the tip was butting against the back of his throat, and he gagged. Tilt-nose only made a satisfied moaning sound as Spock’s mouth worked around his organ in an attempt to cough. Spock tried one last time to resist by shaking his head from side to side, but the guard only gripped harder at his skull, holding him still. Spock knelt, frozen with horror, the only sound the rasping as he attempted to breathe around the solid rod of flesh in his mouth. Tilt-nose repositioned his feet a little, then altered the tilt of Spock’s head, angling it so that his throat made a more perfect line with his mouth.

Then he began to thrust.

Each violent plunge surged deep into Spock’s throat, forcing an irresistible urge to retch. Each penetration was punctuated with a guttural grunt of pleasure. Spock fought to breathe each time the shaft was withdrawn, struggling to drag something into his lungs before the flesh plunged in again.

‘Suck it, half-breed,’ Tilt-nose grunted, holding his groin hard against Spock’s face. ‘Please me, and you can breathe.’

Spock grunted, trying to shake his head. He would be a conduit for this man’s sexual urges – he could do nothing else – but he would not willingly pleasure him.

Tilt-nose thrust his hips forward, pushing a little deeper, and Spock found himself retching again, his stomach contents surging into his throat and then being forced down again by the shaft inside him. His mind was starting to haze out. His ears began to sing. He clenched his hands, tried to pull his head away, but the guard held him too strongly. He tried to force air in through his nostrils, but the clip over his nose was too tight and the rod was too deep in his throat. Every time he tried to breathe his throat just closed on solid flesh. He was going to die here, in the most horrible way, if he didn’t just do as he was ordered…

The instinct for survival took over, and Spock tried desperately to lap and stroke at the shaft with his tongue. How could he suck with a ring holding his mouth open? The situation was unreal. He could barely believe what was happening.

‘I said _suck_ ,’ Tilt-nose snapped, pushing in harder.

Spock tried to protest, but he couldn’t even produce a noise. It was impossible to suck with his mouth held in this way. He stared desperately upwards at the guard’s face, but there was no response. He could sense through the contact that it would be nothing to the guard to let him suffocate to death. He struggled to pull his cheeks in, and finally managed to make a motion of sucking, pummelling at the organ with his tongue until Tilt-nose groaned in satisfaction. He pulled out smoothly, and Spock gasped for air, managing to pull a lungful in before the man pulled his head ruthlessly back over the turgid organ and told him to suck at it again. The movements got faster and faster, bruising his throat and lips with their force, until suddenly Tilt-nose froze with a moan of gratification, his hot shaft plunged deep into Spock’s throat, and it spasmed thick, unpleasant liquid down his gullet.

‘Swallow it,’ Tilt-nose said softly, his hands still clenched over the back of Spock’s head. ‘You will always swallow what I choose to leave in your mouth.’

Spock stared vacantly at the dark mass of hair just an inch from his eyes, taking in the curls of each wiry strand and the smooth skin beneath it with a bizarre, detached fascination. The same hair was pressed hard against his lips and nose. It made his skin itch. His position seemed hyperreal, burning itself ruthlessly into his eidetic memory. The odd, metallic taste of the semen was settling around his tongue, slicked over the roof of his mouth, slipping down his throat. He could not swallow… He could not… He wanted to vomit. But his lungs were burning with the need to breathe again, and he knew he would not be allowed to until he obeyed.

Spock swallowed over and over, unable to do anything else. Then Tilt-nose had the mercy to pull the clip from his nose, finally allowing him to breathe again. He knelt, sucking in air, his face still pressed hard into the rough hair of Tilt-nose’s groin, that smelt of sweat and musk. The shaft in his mouth began to wane, finally shrinking away from the back of his throat. Tilt-nose eventually moved away, breaking the offensive mind contact. Spock collapsed downwards until he was hunched over on his knees, unconscious of anything else around him. Every time he breathed he could smell and taste the semen he had been forced to swallow. He could feel it, cloying over his mouth and throat. His stomach lurched suddenly, and he vomited onto the floor before him, then sat there miserably staring at the mixture of stomach acid and gruel and semen that was trickling towards the drain at the side of the cell.

It took him a few moments to register that his mouth was still being forced open by the ring, his hands were still numb and bound behind his naked back, and his ankles were still clamped to one another by metal fetters. It was all real. This had really happened to him. Tilt-nose was still standing a few scant feet away on the other side of the cell, touching his limp, moist penis with one hand, watching him.

Spock stifled the moan he desperately wanted to utter, and slumped sideways onto the floor, closing his eyes and trying with all of his heart to shut himself off from the cell around him. But he couldn’t. His mouth gaped, each breath tasting of vomit and semen. His stomach was still lurching, despite its emptiness. His precise memory was betraying him, forcing him to relive what had just happened in splintered bursts, remembering the sensation of being suffocated by another man’s erection, of being pressed ruthlessly against his pelvis as he thrust, of tonguing and sucking the shaft just so that he would be allowed to breathe. His face and throat and wrists ached and burned. His jaw was cramping from being forced so wide, saliva he couldn’t stop producing slicking out over the side of his mouth onto the floor. And still Tilt-nose was here with him, watching him.

Spock waited.

He waited for what seemed like hours, although he knew it numbered only in the tens of minutes.

He lay still on the floor with his knees hunched up to his chest, breathing slowly, trying not to smell the semen and vomit. Trying to ignore the fact that his attacker was still here, still watching.

He heard movement, and Tilt-nose had moved back to him, was standing over him, gazing not at him, but at the wall. There was a moment of stillness, then Spock felt hot liquid spilling over his torso. Tilt-nose was urinating on him, on his back and flanks and head. Spock lay still. After what had just happened, this indignity was trifling. Then the guard moved away again, and left him to lie in silence for more long minutes.

He finally opened his eye a crack, and saw that Tilt-nose was sitting now on the other side of the cell. He was watching Spock with an unwavering gaze, one hand tucked into the fold between his legs.

Spock suddenly realised with a chilling horror that he was waiting. He was waiting until he was ready to do it again… There was only one way the guard could intensify the experience, only one more place he could satiate his lust.

His breath froze in his chest. He couldn’t make his lungs move. Panic was flooding over him like ice water. Then suddenly he broke through the paralysis and sucked air in, terror making every muscle in his body contract. If he had been human, he would have screamed.

Tilt-nose stood up. His shaft was pulsing and erect again. This time he was removing his trousers and boots. He was unfastening his shirt and pulling it off. He tossed his clothes casually into a corner of the cell and moved back to Spock, standing over him, silently tensing and relaxing his bulging muscles.

‘Ready?’ he asked softly.

He couldn’t! He couldn’t let it happen again… Spock clenched his body up, trying desperately to move away across the floor, mindful of how undignified he must look. There was nowhere to escape to in the tiny cell. He garbled meaningless protests through the ring-gag, hopeless of any mercy.

Tilt-nose raised his left foot and slammed it into Spock’s side, causing him to double up with the abrupt pain. Then he bent and grabbed at Spock’s naked sides, forcing him up onto his knees again, then forward and down, until he was bent with his head crooked awkwardly onto the hard floor, shivering buttocks pushed up into the air.

‘Nice,’ Tilt-nose muttered. ‘Very nice.’

Spock froze as a callused hand slid in between his legs. Fingers teased through his dark mound of pubic hair, touching his exposed genitals, dragging down his scrotum.

This could not be happening. No one could touch him like this without consent…

‘Pleasantly endowed, heavy – very promising.’

He tried again to form words, but the sounds only reminded him that his mouth had been very obviously consigned to other duties than speaking. It was nothing but a useful orifice. One of his useful orifices…

The fingers kept probing, slipping softly over skin that was rarely touched by anyone but him. He tried to remind himself that it was just epidermal cells, no different to any other area on his body – but it was not. Touching any other part of his body would not bring him to this level of humiliation, to such a sense of vulnerable exposure. A finger touched the very end of his penis, then the nail began to tease into his urethra, pushing in until he flinched away from the pain. He began to breathe in fast, shallow breaths, his ears singing with a panic that was overwhelming his mind.

‘You’re mine, you know,’ Tilt-nose said, very close to his ear. ‘You don’t own yourself. Your body, all of it – it’s mine. Inside and out.’

Spock knelt, panting, unable to protest, to deny what Tilt-nose told him.

‘My last regular fuck up and died on me,’ the guard continued. ‘But I’ve seen the way you’ve looked at me, asking for some attention. You’ve been waiting for your turn.’

Spock garbled a protest, the instinct to fight rising in him again, even though he knew it was futile. Perhaps if he did not fight it was true – perhaps he was asking for it, kneeling here with his buttocks pointing up to his attacker, doing nothing to stop him.

_No_ . That was not true. He was doing everything he had been taught not to in torture training. He was allowing his tormentor to control his thoughts, to turn blame onto himself. He was bound, locked in, in a place with no help and no mercy from any quarter. It was likely that he would be horrifically punished or even killed if he resisted – he had no choice.

‘So tense and tight,’ the guard commented. He was right. Spock felt as if every muscle in his body had contracted to a rock-like hardness. ‘You might want to relax yourself, prisoner. I’m going to do it anyway, and it’ll only hurt more.’

Spock knew the truth of those words, but he could not relax in the knowledge of the imminent attack. His entire body was quivering with the need to explode into action, to fight his way to safety, even though he knew there was no safety.

A finger stroked from the back of his scrotum, tracing up the flat expanse of skin towards his anus. Then hands touched his buttocks, squeezing the flesh and parting them slowly. There was no logic in resisting, but instinct took over. Spock jerked away so fast that he toppled over, coming to rest on his side on the floor. Tilt-nose was pushing the painstick into the small of his back, and he realised he was screaming through the gag, trying to plead with him to stop but unable to form the words. Then, roughly, the guard rolled him onto his back so he was lying on his bound arms, and forced his legs ruthlessly up towards his chest. Spock stared into eyes that were hazed with desire, realising that even if he could speak there was no chance that the man would listen. He struggled to move backwards, but his head was against the wall, and there was nowhere to go. He struggled once more, but the man crushed down onto his legs, pushing the air out of his lungs, and held him still. He held him like that for a long moment, his eyes boring into Spock’s own. Spock tried not to see him, tried to pull his mind away from what was happening.

He could not.

He felt a hand touch his buttock again, then a finger, two fingers, pushed roughly into his sphincter, stretching it painfully wide. It seemed to be the only part of his body of which he was aware. Nothing else mattered. Spock’s stomach muscles tensed, his buttocks tensed, he fought with all his strength against the intrusion. Then the man’s mouth, hot and wet, came down over his scrotum, biting at it so hard that nausea overwhelmed him. His genitals were sucked into the man’s mouth, massaged with his tongue, then spat out again. The fingers pummelled inside him, and he almost sobbed, his entire body and mind revolting at the terrifying intrusion, at someone touching him so intimately and so violently. Perhaps if he slammed his feet down he could stun his attacker, or even kill him – but Spock knew enough about this prison to fear the repercussions of such an attack more than his impending rape.

Then the fingers withdrew, to be replaced with Tilt-nose’s engorged penis, butting at his resisting muscle, trying to gain entry.

‘Come on,’ Tilt-nose muttered, hands roughly trying to force Spock’s pelvis into a better angle. ‘Come on, give it up to me.’

He was trying to push his legs back, trying to roll his pelvis off the floor. Spock didn’t struggle, but he would not help him.

‘Come on, you fucking animal,’ Tilt-nose said again more impatiently. ‘Or do you want to hold the painstick in your throat while I do it?’

Spock blanched at that threat. He knew it would be impossible to stop the attack if he was suffering such great pain. Tilt-nose was going to do this, one way or another. He slowly pulled his legs further up towards his head, using his hands under his back to help angle himself more conveniently for his attacker, trying to close his mind to his own compliance. He felt the erection touching him again, like a rod of metal wrapped in a too-thin blanket of something soft. It pushed again, struggling against the lack of lubrication. This seemed to be going on forever. The guard tried to stretch him open with his hands, and he clenched against the attempt. Then Tilt-nose spat on him, giving just enough wetness to help himself gain entry without easing any of Spock’s discomfort.

He positioned himself again, pushed again with ruthless force. There was a moment’s pressure, then the head popped through Spock’s tightly resisting sphincter, pushing roughly and carelessly in to its full length. He could not suppress a cry at the sudden, twisting pain that accompanied the plunge. Tilt-nose, lodged inside him, let go of one leg for just long enough to slap his face, hard.

‘Shut up,’ he hissed angrily. ‘At least if you must make noise, sound as if you like it.’

Even when he pulled out the pain continued. He wanted to writhe with it, but he couldn’t move. He tried to relax as Tilt-nose entered again, but the muscle would not obey him. Another cry of pain escaped him, and Tilt-nose slapped him again. At that moment Spock gave up fighting. He lay staring at the ceiling above him as the man rammed into him again and again, sending shooting, shivering pains through his bowels and groin. He tried furiously to relax, to ease the pain of each penetration, but it was so hard not to clench every muscle. He tried to tell himself that it was just a penis, just flesh – but it felt like a rod of rough titanium entering him each time, searing into his gut with a pain that made his mind dizzy. He forced himself fiercely to make no sound, terrified of anything that might resemble a noise of pleasure. Each time the guard entered his head was banged roughly into the wall behind him, but he barely noticed that pain. He felt as if his mind was in another place to his body, looking down, watching himself lying there being buggered by this repulsive being. He could feel the roughness of the man’s pubic hair against his skin each time he pushed home, and his soft, cool scrotum slapping into his buttocks. He felt the guard’s firm hands always pushing down on the backs of his thighs, his fingers clenching at each plunge. He could hear the man’s short, sharp breaths matching his own, his occasional soft grunts of effort or gratification. He could see his face contorted with an abstracted desire. He could feel tears running down his own cheeks, but he wasn’t aware that he was crying. The world had shattered around him, and there was nothing but these shameful, horrific, repeated penetrations into his most intimate area by a man who had stolen even his control over his own body.

His eyes fell upon his feet, dangling close to his face, shackled together at the ankles. Tilt-nose pushed in again, jolting Spock’s legs, forcing a soft grunt from his open mouth. His feet jerked. They looked odd, white and bloodless, with green marks at the ankles where the metal was pressuring them. They were beginning to tingle and cramp. This would never end… Nerves inside him that he didn’t know he had were aflame with the sensation of each penetration, the pain being twinned with a silken sexual stimulation that he desperately didn’t want to feel. His arms were aching, his fingers already numb and cold where they lay under the pressure of his lower back. His tongue was drying out, but saliva was trickling down the back of his throat. The jawbones behind his teeth ached from being pressed into by the metal ring. He swallowed awkwardly, trying not to make any noise as he did. The thrusting went on, and on, and on…

Then Tilt-nose pushed home one last time, pressing his pelvis hard against Spock’s buttocks as if he was trying to bury himself even deeper. Spock felt the jerking ejaculation at the same moment that the guard grunted in satisfaction and slumped forward, letting his weight rest heavily onto Spock’s aching thighs. He could feel the thickness still inside him, his muscles clenched on its hardness. Spock lay still, trying to convince himself that he was not here, in this situation. If he did not move or make a noise, he could believe himself elsewhere, on the ship perhaps, looking up at the ceiling in his quarters. But the man’s face was there, just inches from his own, his breath hot on Spock’s cheeks. His skin was damp with sweat, sticking to Spock’s own. His weight was pressed down on Spock so hard he found it hard to breathe. The man was panting, his eyes unfocussed, completely isolated in the aftermath of his own orgasm. There was no way for Spock to feel anything but reality…

There was a movement, and Tilt-nose slipped out of him, the expulsion followed by another twist of pain and a rush of warm semen that trickled down Spock’s buttocks towards the bottom of his back. His fingers, trapped beneath him, felt the sticky fluid touch their tips, surprisingly warm to his bloodless hands. Then his feet thudded to the floor, suddenly released from their bonds, his muscles cramping as they were allowed to move. The guard roughly pushed him onto his side and released his hands, then pushed a finger into his mouth and released the metal gag.

‘Up, on your knees,’ he said gruffly, not even looking at Spock as he went to put on his clothes.

Spock did not even consider arguing. He pushed off the floor with stinging, tingling hands, and knelt silently on his aching legs, staring at the slight gap between his knees. It took almost all his effort just to stay upright. His mouth was still partially open, his jaw muscles only slowly relaxing after being held taut for so long. Somehow, for some reason, his own penis was erect, rearing up towards him as if to emphasise his lack of control. He felt bruised all over, from his attempts to escape and from the guard’s retaliation. His wrists hurt terribly, and as he glanced at them he saw thin trails of blood that had trickled onto his hands, and heavy bruising where he had struggled against the cuffs. As he knelt he felt his rectum spasm, and another small spill of semen trickled onto his calves.

‘Don’t be rude – thank me,’ Tilt-nose said as he turned, calmly doing up the final fastenings on his dark shirt.

‘Thank you, sir,’ Spock whispered automatically. He dared say nothing else. Then the forcefield was clear again, and the guard was gone.

Spock knelt numbly on the floor in his cell. His eyes stared vacantly at the floor, but he barely saw what was in front of him. He pressed his hand to his mouth, barely believing the use to which it had just been put. And the rest…

He began to tremble uncontrollably. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what to think. He was suffused with disgust and shame. He wanted to wash, to cleanse every inch of his body, but he could not. He wanted to swill water into his mouth to take away the taste of vomit and semen. He wanted to stop the pain in his mind. But he had no frame of reference for how to react to such an event. His mind was fighting against him, forcing him to keep reliving the experience in an attempt to understand. But there was no understanding. He bent his head onto the floor and tried to meditate, but no matter how hard he tried to focus, all he could think of was the hands on his body, the hot, relentless thrusts of that man’s erection into his body, against his face, into his mouth. He tried to rationalise what had happened. He had been used merely as a convenient place for a man to relieve his sexual urges. The attack had nothing to do with his own body – merely with the availability of it. But logic didn’t help. It didn’t help the pain or the overwhelming mortification that was crushing him to the floor. It didn’t take away the taste in his mouth or the pain in his rectum, or the sticky fluid that was drying on his skin. Nothing helped. Oh, he wanted to sob until his chest split apart, but he would not treat anyone passing to the sight of a Vulcan crying. Eventually Spock did the only thing he could think of to make the thinking stop – he moved forward to the forcefield and leaned into it, letting the pain build to a crescendo, until everything faded into beautiful, blessed oblivion.


	3. Chapter 3

He woke almost immediately, lying on something cold and hard, with a white ceiling above him. He had a vague residual awareness that someone had injected a stimulant into his arm. He moved his hand, and a chain rattled. He was lying uncovered on a bare metal bed in the medical centre he had been admitted to the prison through. His wrists were chained by short tethers to the sidebars, while men in pale blue uniforms moved around him. His head ached unmercifully. His whole body ached, his muscles stiff and sore. Then he became aware of other sensations, of the odd, sore aching in his rectum, the swollen bruising in his throat. The crystal sharp memory of everything that had happened surged into his mind, forcing a long, low moan from his lips. He had gained a respite from his thoughts, but not a reprieve.

‘Please,’ he whispered, his voice hoarse from the earlier abuse. His mouth was so dry he could barely speak. ‘Please, help me.’

The men in the room turned to look at him, then conversed in an alien language. He felt the trembling set up again, wracking through him mercilessly.

‘Please,’ he whispered again, tugging at the chains on his wrists. One of his wrists felt badly swollen. That sensation of give when he had he fought against the manacles must have been a bone cracking.

One of men came over to him, holding a small device. He flicked a switch, and suddenly Spock could understand what was being said.

‘You haven’t been given permission to speak, prisoner,’ the doctor said stiffly, holding a scanner over him. ‘I will overlook that this one time, since you could not raise your hand. What do you want?’

‘Please, sir,’ he tried again. ‘Please, help me.’

‘We are helping you. You have injured yourself. Remain still while we examine you, and you will be returned to your cell.’

‘I have been raped, sir,’ Spock breathed, so quietly he barely heard himself. He stared at the ceiling as he spoke. He could not bear to look at his own body, or at the men that he lay before, naked. He could barely stand to speak those few words, but for the knowledge that telling someone may gain him some help.

The man paused in his scanning, and exchanged what looked like an amused glance with the other man in the room. ‘Really?’ he asked acerbically. ‘By another prisoner? Some of them are rapists, you know.’

‘By a guard, sir,’ Spock said faintly.

The man raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh? Do you have his name?’

Spock shook his head mutely. The question was ridiculous.

‘Then do you have his identity number?’

Spock shook his head again, his heart sinking. He would get no help or protection here.

‘Well then,’ the man said, exchanging a grin with his colleague. ‘When you next see him, ask him his name, then let me know. Perhaps we can give him a pay increase, eh? Schedule him a regular slot with you – pardon the pun.’

The men in the room laughed heartily. Spock closed his eyes briefly. He did not know what to do. He had no power. He lay still, trying to bring some saliva into his parched mouth. His tongue felt like something dead behind his teeth.

‘Please, sir,’ he asked again. ‘May I have some water?’

The man stared at him. ‘Is it your feeding time, prisoner? Do you believe you’re allowed special privileges just because you’ve damaged yourself?’

‘No, sir,’ Spock whispered.

Shame overwhelmed him as his bowels made a sudden, insistent spasm, and he felt a disgusting mixture of semen and faeces slip out between his buttocks.

‘You revolting, dirty little slut,’ the other man in the room snapped, coming over with a cloth and roughly parting Spock’s legs to wipe the mess off the table, but not, Spock noted miserably, to wipe him clean at all. He saw green on the cloth, and knew that the guard’s attack had caused him to bleed. ‘Can’t you control yourself?’

Spock closed his eyes, biting his lip over the crushing humiliation. No matter how hard he tried, he could not escape from the treachery of his own body. He did not understand how he could endure this. Surely after such an attack something would be done?

‘Please, sir, let me call my captain,’ he tried desperately, appealing to the one who seemed to be a doctor. ‘Please…’

The man’s voice suddenly became harsh. ‘You do not have a captain. You do not have a ship. You do not have friends or relatives or business acquaintances. You have no place of origin, no race, no species. You have no future. You have no name. You are prisoner 2719-614F. You exist. Your existence is determined by us.’

‘I do not exist to be raped, sir,’ Spock whispered, almost speaking to himself.

The man stared at him, a cruel hardness in his face. ‘There is no rape in this prison,’ he said clearly. ‘There can be no rape when you do not own the right to give or withhold consent. Your body is owned by the prison, and the prison is run by the guards.’

Spock breathed out in a long sigh. There was nothing he could do. The man was right. He possessed nothing, not even his own self.

‘My wrist, sir,’ he said finally. ‘I believe it is broken.’

‘Yes, a minor fracture,’ the doctor nodded. ‘You don’t have any injuries that warrant the expense of treatment. Perhaps you should try to be more careful in your – loveplay – in future.’

Spock nodded silently. There was little use in pleading for treatment that he was certain he would not receive.

‘You attempted to harm yourself with the forcefield,’ the man continued. ‘That is not permitted. Your notes say this is the second time you have injured yourself on the forcefield. Were both attempts deliberate?’

‘I did not realise the strength of the field the first time, sir,’ Spock murmured. ‘I only touched it for a moment, sir.’

‘And this time?’

Spock closed his eyes, unable to explain the mental pain that had driven him to touch the field.

‘Answer me, prisoner,’ the man said dangerously.

‘I touched it deliberately, sir,’ he said finally.

‘Why?’

Spock lay silently, misery overwhelming his mind. ‘Because I have been raped, sir,’ he whispered finally.

‘What did I just tell you about rape in this prison?’ the doctor asked, bending down very close to his face.

‘That there is none, sir,’ Spock said.

‘So you’re simply a dirty little prisoner who let himself be fucked by a guard, is that right?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Spock whispered.

‘Well, that’s nothing unusual. No reason to harm yourself. You don’t want to be beamed into a stripped cell, do you?’ he asked. ‘No door. No light, no toilet pot, no sleeping mat, no heating or shower, no exercise, no speaking, no room to stand up. You wouldn’t like that.’

‘No, sir,’ Spock said almost silently. He had not imagined that a cell could be stripped further than his was already.

‘Good. Since this is your first deliberate attempt, I will be lenient. When you are returned to your cell you will be not be able to move. You will not leave your sleeping mat. You will stay like that for two days. You will not attempt self-harm again. Your next punishment will be more severe.’

The man put a hand behind Spock’s head, lifting it up a little, and released a hypo into his spinal cord, just above his shoulders. A strange sensation drifted through his body – he could feel perfectly well, but could not make his muscles obey any attempt to move. The room blurred, and he was back in his cell, lying in his sleeping area, unable to move anything but his head and neck.

He lay staring miserably up at the ceiling, trying desperately to stop his mind reliving the last few hours. It was so hard to concentrate – it was getting harder and harder to make his mind obey the mind rules the longer he was here. If he could have forced himself into unconsciousness he would have, instantly. Even if he had been able to move, he didn’t see a reason for moving. He had never believed in elaborate metaphors to describe emotions, but now he felt as if he was being pinned to the ground by a cloak of damp, heavy material. Moving would just remind him even more of his carnality, and how it had betrayed him. His wrists throbbed, and he could not suppress the pain. He could see how badly swollen and discoloured his left wrist was out of the corner of his eye, but he could do nothing about it. He could not ignore the uncomfortable feelings radiating through his groin and lower back. All he could do was remember, and wonder when it was going to happen again. Would it happen as he lay here paralysed?

The hours trickled by. He slept, and woke again, still paralysed. He turned his head and watched the shuffling feet in the corridor outside of prisoners leaving for their exercise. He lay and waited, images swimming in his head of what had happened to him, his mind blaming him, then excusing him, then blaming him again for allowing such a thing to happen.

He slept again, and when he woke he was still trapped in the same nightmare, still with the disgust and shame clinging to his body and mind.

Food was beamed into the cell, but he could not move to eat it. After the first day his throat was horribly dry, his stomach clenching on its emptiness, the taste of vomit still in his mouth. His bowels and bladder obeyed no commands to wait, so he lay uncomfortably in his own mess, unable to avoid the stench, or the pain of passing faeces through torn muscles. He was overwhelmed with a sudden burning hatred for his body. It just kept letting him down, hurting him, shaming him, tormenting him with its needs. It would be so much easier if he could reduce himself to just a mind…

He stared up at the blank ceiling, imagining the sky and the darkness of space up above, thinking,  _Please, Jim, please, someone, come and take me from this place. How can my own people leave me in this place?_

When, on the second morning, the shower sprang into life he could not move into the centre of the spray or scrub away the hateful evidence of the assault that was still on his body. He lay with his mouth open, letting the bitter, soapy water trickle into his throat in a desperate attempt to get some moisture into his body, hoping that if the detergent made him sick he would be able to turn his head enough not to choke. Hoping that if the detergent made him sick he would not be able to turn his head, and he would choke to death and be free of this confusion and pain. Hoping… that someday somebody would help him, because he had no power to help himself.

Then, finally, at some point during the night the paralysis wore off, and he woke curled on his side with his knees pulled up to his chest, sobbing in the wake of a nightmare and agonised by bursts of punishment for the noise from the pain pads in the floor. He jerked upright, forcing himself into silence, staring around himself as the reality of the empty white cell hit him again. But there was nobody in here touching him, like there had been in his dream. He pushed himself backwards until he was huddled with his back pressed into the corner, arms around his knees, trying to work out what the stench was around him. He looked down at himself dazedly, to see that he was smeared with his own faeces where he had thrashed on his sleeping mat. He could feel it dried between his buttocks. He could still feel the semen too, lying in a brittle film over his chin and cheeks. He pressed his palms flat against his face, suppressing the moan he wanted to give both for the sake of emotional control and to spare himself the pain of punishment for making noise. Up until a few days ago he had been miserably oppressed by his situation, but he had at least felt a certain degree of safety in his cell. Now all the enclosing walls gave him was the certainty that there was no escape in any direction. All he could do was sit and wait for Tilt-nose to return, and know he could do nothing to stop him.

  


((O))

  


Spock shuffled in line in the exercise room, his eyes cast down towards the floor, the sound of hundreds of bare moving feet rustling around him. It was two hours into the day’s exercise, five months – or was it six? – into his captivity. He had lost count of the weeks, lost count of how many times Tilt-nose had come into his cell and sated his appetite in his body. Sometimes he gained a day of rest, but then Tilt-nose was there again, four, five, six times a week, always touching him, possessing him, torturing him with his words.

He moved his eyes about shiftily, trying to let them feast on the variation of the people around him. This was the only time when there was anything different to look at than white walls, a white ceiling, and the white contours of his toilet pot. He tried every day to seek out something new in the gathering he was in, to gain some sense of the movement of time, some sense that things changed in this place. He noticed how people’s hair grew between shavings, how the injuries they suffered changed and healed and were replaced. He saw how sometimes someone was missing, or someone new was in the ranks. It helped to concentrate on other things, even though it never quite erased the knowledge of what he had become. He carried a constant awareness of invasive hands on his body, fingers or tongue between his legs, hard flesh ramming into him. Every time he moved his jaw or his lips or tongue he remembered the sensation of being orally raped, and sickness rose in him.

‘Prisoner 614F.’

His designation was barked out across the room. The voice caused his stomach to lurch. It was Tilt-nose, the voice he heard when he dreamt, when he was awake, when he was lying bound on the floor of his cell trying to shut his mind off from the abuse he was suffering. He lifted his eyes slightly, to see the guard pointing at the spot just before his feet. Perhaps he had seen him looking around. Looking at other prisoners was forbidden.

Spock broke rank and shuffled reluctantly towards the guard, keeping his eyes on the grey concrete floor in front of him. He stopped just a few feet in front of Tilt-nose, and asked quietly, ‘Yes, sir?’

Tilt-nose fingered his painstick. ‘You’re out of line, boy.’

Spock began to protest, ‘Sir, I thought you called me over…’

He laughed. ‘Just pointing at my nice new shoes. Thought you might like to see them. But – now you’re out of line, aren’t you?’

Spock trembled. It was cripplingly cold in the exercise room, and it was only the movement that kept some degree of warmth in him.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he tried. ‘I misunderstood.’

‘Oh…’ Tilt-nose said, circling him slowly until he was behind him. The muscles in Spock’s back tensed instinctively, one by one. He could feel the man’s hands on him even when he knew he wasn’t touching him. ‘Well stupidity should be punished. So should disobedience.’

Tilt-nose grabbed at his arms, pulling them behind him, and Spock felt the restraints clicking onto his wrists. His trembling increased. Surely the guard wouldn’t assault him here, before all the prisoners? He had always made sure he had complete privacy before.

‘Please, sir…’ Spock whispered, so quietly that the words never left his mouth. He could do nothing to stop him. He knew that by now.

‘Bend over,’ Tilt-nose said softly, and Spock complied wordlessly, waiting for the attack.

He was left standing there for a few seconds, and then something much, much harder than an erection pushed into his rectum, and suddenly the pain began, radiating through his entire body. Spock staggered, gasping. The painstick! It was the painstick, forced inside him, the agony a thousand times worse than when it was applied externally. As he moved Tilt-nose put his foot out, and he toppled onto the ground. He lay there thrashing about like a fish on a pavement, arching his back, desperately trying to reach the stick with his tied hands, trying to use his muscles to push it out. Screams were forced from his throat as the pain pulsed through him in excruciating waves, the constancy of it eradicating all ability to control.

He could hear laughing. Tilt-nose and the other guards in the room were standing around him, laughing at him, occasionally kicking out at him, shouting at the other prisoners to keep walking and ignore what was happening. Spock gasped in air, forcing himself to keep breathing, despite the pain that was making his chest freeze and his arms spasm and his legs jerk uncontrollably. His eyes were streaming. His vision began to blur out in a green haze. He could barely see anything but the concrete under his face, that was patched and spattered by his saliva and tears. There was nothing in the world but pain, balled up inside him, radiating through him, shooting along every nerve. His throat was hoarse with the screams that kept coming, pulsing out of his mouth like something solid. He didn’t know if it was possible to die of pain, but he was aware that the strain on his heart alone was enormous.

Then there was a voice louder than any other, shouting a command that cut through his screaming and the laughter.

‘Guards!’

There was suddenly silence, but for his own screams that rang through the cavernous room. The stick was pulled out, and he lay dragging in air in sobbing gasps, trying to stop the relentless spasming of his muscles. He saw booted feet near his face, and closed his eyes tightly. He hadn’t the strength to roll away, and if he was to be kicked again, he wouldn’t watch it happen.

No foot contacted with his body. He caught snatches of the conversation around him, the guards being reprimanded. Something about a photograph, about needing to appease the Federation’s worries. Then he was hauled to his feet and dragged from the room, barely able to support his own weight. He was taken into a transporter chamber and found himself standing in the medical room, still supported by the guards. Outside of the range of the translators he could no longer understand their speech, so he resigned himself to their ministrations, letting them clean the dirt off his face and chest, covering the worst of his bruises with some kind of cream. Then he was leant against the wall, and a translator was switched on.

‘Stand up straight,’ one of the doctors said, pushing at his shoulder. ‘Look straight ahead. For God’s sake try to look less – unwell.’

Spock tried hard to straighten himself, no thought of disobeying entering his mind. He tried to blink the haze out of his eyes, focussing slowly on what was in front of him. One of the guards stood holding a camera, pointing it at his face. He stared at it curiously, then remembered that he was being insolent, and dropped his gaze again.

He was slapped hard on the arm. ‘Look up! Look straight ahead!’

Spock raised his head slowly, but he couldn’t bring himself to look directly at the camera again. There was a flash as a picture was taken, a muttered, ‘That’ll do,’ and then he was being ushered out of the room again, back into the transporter, and back into line in the exercise room.

  


((O))

  


Kirk stared at the image on the viewscreen in his quarters. Just getting that image had taken Starfleet Command six months of investigations and diplomatic wrangling. It wasn’t even an image Kirk was meant to have – it had been sent to him privately by a secretary from Command, a woman to whom he had once been very close, and who still did him favours once in a while.

‘That’s not Spock, Bones,’ he murmured. ‘It’s not him.’

McCoy shrugged, bending closer to the image himself. ‘The attached bio-scan data checks out. It is him, Jim.’

‘I know, but… The Spock we know – that’s not him.’

The image on the screen was gaunt, pale even for Spock. His hair was shaven to a fine stubble on his head that matched the stubble on his chin. His pointed ears looked strangely outsized for the bare, malnourished face and head. The top half of his naked chest showed in the picture, and a dark bruise was obvious despite an attempt to powder over it, spreading over one of his shoulders.

‘They’ve tried to cover things up,’ McCoy pointed out, touching his finger to the photograph. ‘Look, here, here, and here. They’ve put some kind of concealer over wounds he’s got.’

‘Apparently they say he instigated a fight, and that’s why he’s bruised,’ Kirk said dubiously. ‘But that doesn’t sound like the Spock I know.’

‘More likely he was given a beating by someone else. Doesn’t look like he’s got the stamina to fight back. He’s freezing cold – you can tell by the mottling on his skin. He looks malnourished as well,’ McCoy muttered. ‘Look at the discoloration around his eyes, how his collar bones stand out. I know Spock was never fat, but good God… He’s seriously underweight, possible muscle wasting.’

‘But look, Bones,’ Kirk pressed. ‘It’s not that. Look at his eyes.’

The Spock they knew always looked at things directly, with a burning gaze that many people flinched at. The Vulcan in this photograph had his head tilted down slightly, as if the photo had been taken as he looked away submissively. His eyes were dull and impenetrable, rimmed with green as if he had been crying.

‘He’s not even focussed,’ McCoy said softly. ‘He’s trying not to look at anything. That is a Vulcan who isn’t well, psychologically. Jim, we’ve got to do something…’

‘I know,’ Kirk nodded. ‘That’s why I’ve gone to the top.’ He flicked the toggle to turn the picture off, saying into the intercom, ‘Kirk to Ambassador Sarek.’

The image of Spock’s father appeared on the screen, the contrast to his son’s appearance only heightening how ill Spock seemed.

‘Kirk,’ Sarek nodded. ‘I have been waiting for your call.’

‘You got the picture, sir?’ Kirk asked, and McCoy exchanged a glance with him.

‘Yes,’ Sarek nodded. ‘And I find it most – disturbing.’

‘Do you agree that something needs to be done, sir?’

‘I concur that my son is extremely unwell,’ Sarek said softly. ‘And I do not believe that it is just for him to suffer for the crimes of another man. Spock appears to be mentally disturbed by his captivity, or by his treatment there.’

‘He’s broken,’ Kirk said succinctly. ‘They’ve broken him down, taken his will.’

‘Have you any idea what might have brought him to this state, sir?’ McCoy asked, desperate for some hint of information, even if it was utter speculation.

A slight expression of humour mixed with regret flitted over Sarek’s face. ‘Dr McCoy, the Vulcan mind link does not function over such distances. My only clue from the photograph is that Spock has been physically and psychologically harmed. His hands are obviously restrained behind his back. His arms and chest have obviously been struck or otherwise damaged. I believe I can make out bruises in the form of finger marks on his left arm, as if he has been gripped tightly. Psychologically, something has been done to him to reduce him to an appearance of submission. I imagine that would be a routine of instruction and severe punishment over a prolonged period. If the situation is not reversed, Spock will continue to deteriorate, perhaps to an irrecoverable state.’

‘We’ve got to get him out of there,’ McCoy muttered.

‘I am very well aware of that, Doctor,’ Sarek said smoothly. ‘I have been attempting for the last six months to secure his release through diplomatic channels. So far, I have failed.’

‘Then do I have your backing to attempt to rescue your son, Ambassador Sarek?’ Kirk asked succinctly. ‘Starfleet will not sanction a rescue. They say Spock appears _in a satisfactory physical condition_ in the photo, and won’t enter into speculation about his mental state.’

‘You have my personal approval to attempt a rescue,’ Sarek nodded. ‘I will take the case to the Vulcan High Council, and I have little doubt that you will gain their official approval. However, the Council’s approval cannot protect you from repercussions internal to Starfleet.’

‘I know that, sir,’ Kirk nodded. ‘But it may help – it may help a great deal.’

‘Captain Kirk, do you have any idea where Spock is being held?’ Sarek asked curiously.

‘That tattoo on his chest – I’ve had my communications officer translate it. It says 2719-614F. I presume it’s his identification number. It apparently took the Darkartians this long to find him because prisoners’ names are erased on their entry to the prison system, and replaced in every reference with a number. But I’m hoping that will help me work out where he might be.’

‘I admit I have done certain research of my own into the Darkartian prison system, Captain,’ Sarek told him. ‘They have some three thousand facilities, each identified by its own number. Those in the first thousand are low security facilities. Those in the second are medium. Those in the third are the harshest, with the highest levels of protection around them and the most barbaric level of treatment. I would guess from the number on my son’s chest that he is being held in facility 2719, and thus an extremely high security unit. The guards in such prisons tend to be violent ex-offenders themselves, and live in the prison. I find that fact somewhat disquieting.’

‘Yes,’ Kirk murmured. ‘Do you know where those facilities are? I’ve been trying locate them, but I come up against brick walls everywhere I turn.’

‘Fortunately I have a little more sway as far as interplanetary relations are concerned. I have spoken to a colleague in the Sayloian embassy here, who has in turn spoken to the Darkartian ambassador on his planet. It is thanks to him that I am in possession of most of the facts that I have relayed to you. I will extend all possible influence in that direction to discover where that facility is located.’

‘Thank you, Ambassador,’ Kirk nodded, relief washing through him. He could sense that this rescue was by no means going to be simple, but having someone as determined and powerful as Sarek on his side made it a great deal easier.


	4. Chapter 4

The incident in the exercise room seemed to bring Spock to the other guards’ attention. It was as if Tilt-nose’s treatment of him had marked him out as a candidate for abuse. More than one of them visited his cell after that day, sometimes alone, sometimes in gangs of up to four or five. For Spock it was somehow worse than Tilt-nose’s attacks. He was accustomed to Tilt-nose. He knew the way he tasted, the way he smelt, the positions he favoured, how long a visit was likely to take. He knew how to please him, and how to avoid angering him.

The worst of Tilt-nose’s attacks now was that he was finding harder to shield against the man’s thoughts when he was touched. Each time he was assaulted his mind was battered by the guard’s chaotic and violent emotions, and by fantasies of which he was the centre, in ever more bizarre and degrading positions which he was terrified would become reality. He saw himself as Tilt-nose saw him, as a construction of soft flesh and orifices and genitals, while the only personality he was allowed was as an extension of his role as a sexual marionette.

The others were unpredictable, strange. Some of them did not even penetrate him – they just played with cutting off his breathing, or touching his body, making him touch and stimulate his own genitals, or making him lie still as they urinated or defecated on him or into his mouth. Incidents stood out in his mind – the time two of them came and attached a sucker device to the ceiling, roping his wrists and ankles and hauling him up off the floor in a harness so he hung suspended, belly up in the air. One of them thrust into his anus with rapid, unmerciful strokes while the other held his head in his hands and pushed into his upsidedown mouth until he ejaculated, making Spock choke and splutter as the foul tasting semen ran into the back of his nose.

Another time one of them came into his cell and gestured at his toilet pot, saying;

‘You have a choice today. You eat what’s in that pot, or I take you to the edge of oblivion with the painstick, and then I have you.’

Spock forced himself to consume everything in the pot, piece by piece, to drink the liquid that was left behind. Then the guard took him anyway, heedless of his wretched vomiting and his pleas for mercy.

Then there was the worst time yet…

He woke to feel masculine hands touching his arms, manhandling him over onto his front and cuffing his wrists together. It was not that that was so unnerving – he was used to that kind of treatment. What unsettled Spock so deeply was the fact that he could feel something small and hard fixed onto his scalp at the base of his skull, emitting an odd, nauseating vibration, and that whatever it was had rendered him totally blind, deaf, and, almost worse, psi-blind. He could sense no mental emanations around him, he was barely aware of the existence of his eyes. He could not even pick up slight sounds through the vibration in his skull, indicating that the senses were being cut off in his brain, not at the receptors.

He lay with his cheek to the floor, feeling the vibrations of what seemed like more than one pair of feet, as a cold hand ran roughly down his torso, over his buttocks and down his thighs. He swallowed, waiting for the assault, but it didn’t come. This was nothing more than an inspection. He strained to hear something, even though he knew he would not. His thigh muscles instinctively contracted as a hand slipped between them to touch his genitals, and a hard blow reminded him that nothing more than utter passivity would be tolerated.

Then he was being hauled to his feet, and shoved forward, and he walked, stepping clumsily through his silent, invisible surroundings with merely a hand against his back to guide him. He could not prevent his heart clenching with apprehension. Was this to be a transfer to another, more barbaric prison? A punishment of some sort? … An execution?

He tried hard to keep some awareness of where he was going. Roughly one hundred metres to the end of the corridor. Right. Perhaps thirty metres, then left, then right soon after. He could not be certain, but this seemed to be the route to the exercise room… But it was the middle of the night. He imagined the room would be deserted – unless different areas of the prison worked on different timeframes to stretch resources.

He could somehow sense the largeness of the exercise room when he reached it – perhaps he felt the change in air currents on his skin. The room was freezing cold. Usually it was warmed a little by the mass of moving bodies in it. He could feel his body hair standing up all over, his nipples hardening, his testes shrinking back towards his body. The hand on his back gave him a rough shove, and he stumbled forwards, into something hard and cold, like a metal bar. Then he was being manoeuvred onto some kind of apparatus that held him bent over on his front, his legs splayed, his front half held up by a thin bar under his collarbone, his chin resting in a cup that held his head pushed upright. His mouth was levered wide open with sprung clips. His wrists and ankles were locked to the frame. He still could not be sure what was going to happen. He had no idea who was in the room.

It was almost a relief when he felt the first touch – hands parting his buttocks, the moist heat of a tongue slipping into his anus. This was to be an assault – nothing worse – nothing more permanent. But it was a violently aggressive assault. When the penis rammed in he could not even hear his own scream as he felt skin rip like raw pastry. With his other senses cut off he was acutely aware of every sensation – hands moving roughly over his body, carelessly toying with his genitals, touching him everywhere like animals crawling on him. He knew he was probably grunting at each thrust behind him, perhaps crying out a little at the pain – but without hearing it he could not stop it.

When the first one finished, another one began, and not long after, before the second had finished, an erect penis soiled with his own blood was pushed into his mouth. At one point he felt hands touching his back, the fingers clenched with tension, and he realised he could also feel something at the wrists – something cold and hard like the cuffs he had worn himself. _They had brought prisoners to rape him!_ They were forcing prisoners to penetrate him, presumably with the threat of pain, or worse. Perhaps not all were forced, either. He was well aware that he was hated by many in this place, guards and prisoners alike. It did not matter that the prisoners knew nothing about him – they could see that he was Vulcan, and could guess that he was in prison for to pay for the Veradan Massacre. He had had men spit at him in the exercise room before, or aim a blow at him, and seen the guards turn a blind eye.

He had lost count of time. He had lost count of how many had raped him or struck him or otherwise harmed him. His legs were beginning to sag under him with the exhaustion of being held in that position. Then suddenly there was a commotion – hands touching him, unfastening him from the metal frame, pulling him away and hustling him on unsteady feet back to his cell. He collapsed onto the floor when the hands let go, feeling a bitter, mind-jarring pain as the device on his skull was ripped away, and his eyes focussed to see Tilt-nose just as he left the cell.

Spock lay on the floor, taking in where he was, noticing that it must be morning, because his food bowl was there near the door. He crawled towards it, trying to ignore the pain of bruises and cuts and abuse, and picked up the bowl in trembling hands. The bowl was usually removed ten minutes after it was left, and no matter how unpleasant he felt, he recognised the importance of the nourishment it provided. He sipped the cold, watery stuff down slowly, feeling it settle heavily in his stomach. He noticed dully that there was blood on his arm – someone had cut his forearm, and he had not noticed.

He put the empty bowl down just as it shimmered out of the cell in the transporter beam. Then he crawled back to his mat and lay there, too sore to sit up on his haunches. He knew he was not dangerously injured. Only once before had he felt pain quite like this time – but that had been worse, and a few minutes later he had found himself lying in the medical centre with his legs being held up by two muscle-bound guards while a grumbling doctor sealed up the lacerations inside him. The doctors here did not practise to ease pain or correct minor injuries – they intervened when life was threatened, and even then only as much as was needed, without local anaesthetics or pain relief.

He lay, musing. How many of the prisoners his eyes fell upon in the exercise room today would be ones who had raped him while he crouched shackled and blind and deaf? How many had done it to punish him, and how many simply because they had been denied sexual gratification for so long? How many of the guards had taken him? And what about Tilt-nose? He hadn’t been there – he had been sure of it. He hadn’t tasted or smelt him. For some reason, whatever it was, he had appeared merely to save him from any more abuse… His mind clouded with exhaustion. He had gained very little sleep last night. He should be beginning his morning meditation soon, but instead, he let himself slip into a deep, healing sleep.

  


((O))

  


Through the assaults and their emotional fallout, Spock was increasingly losing grip on his tight schedule of internalised study and review. In his hour for re-reading the literature stored in his eidetic memory he found novels and plays and poetry blending into each other, words blurring away from his memory and being replaced by others. He could barely remember if the facts he dredged up concerning various fields of science were correct, and if they were wrong, what was the point in reviewing them? He could not even manage to meditate any longer – he seemed to have lost all power of concentration – and his ability to deal with what happened to him in the prison was collapsing. He began to drop his rigid timetable – his days were still demarcated by the arrival of his two meals, the exercise period, and the time he set aside for sleep.

Instead of studying, he found himself sitting and staring at his own body. He had become intimately familiar with every inch of his skin within reach of his eyes, in a way he never had been before. If he had had access to pen and paper he could have drawn every part of himself in perfect detail. He knew exactly how each toe looked, with the nails clipped straight across by another man. He knew every sinew that showed under his skin, every vein that pulsed close to the surface, every mole and freckle and scar, every follicle with each perfect black hair.

He was sick to death of seeing his own naked skin, chilled and goose-pimpled. He was sick of seeing other bodies, so indistinguishable from his own in their uniform of flesh. He hated himself. He hated that his only usefulness lay in possessing two tight, warm holes for other men to use. He hated having to touch himself as he moved, having to touch his penis with his hands when he used the toilet-pot. He hated this body that had no face, but he was terrified of catching a glimpse of his own face, seeing his own eyes with the knowledge in them of how his body had betrayed him.

He began to sit in his usual position leaning into the corner of his cell, closing his eyes so he could not see his body, and walking through memories and scenarios from his past. Then he began to create fantasies, an alternative, normal life away from this place. His favourite place was the ship, the most familiar and comforting place he knew, peopled by his closest friends. Sometimes he imagined himself in the rec room, eating tasteful, textured food, speaking with Jim and Dr McCoy about the day’s events. He played chess with different people that he knew, physically moving imaginary pieces with his own hand, carefully anticipating the kind of moves that they would make and countering with his own logical ones. Sometimes – more and more often – the games disintegrated as he lost the thread of the moves, but the warm comfort that surrounded him in such situations was enough.

Sometimes he sat in his room playing his lyre, fingers moving on the strings, humming the tune to himself almost silently and transliterating it into the sound that the lyre would make in his head. The room was beautiful to his senses, the warm red fabric on the walls cosseting him and relaxing to his eyes. The knowledge that his own comfortable, comforting bed was waiting behind the screen was wonderful to him. At any moment he liked he could move over to it, slip under the soft blankets, and sleep in the knowledge that when he woke he would be still on the ship, and safe.

Sometimes the fantasies would slip him into sleep, and they would turn into full-blown dreams. At first these dreams were wonderful things, replacing the nightmares he experienced where Tilt-nose was the central character, where he lay trembling as his body was used roughly to satisfy that hateful man’s lust. But then they began to change. He would be sitting in his quarters with Jim, talking with him, and then suddenly Jim, his best friend, his most trusted confidant, would be pushing against him, hitting him, stripping off his clothes and wrenching his arms behind his back in preparation for raping him. Once he woke from one of these dreams, lying on his front and screaming as Jim pushed into him, to feel the bonds on his wrists, the smothering weight of Tilt-nose lying over him, the relentless plunge of his hard erection slamming into his behind.

From that moment on he found it difficult to play out his daydreams with Jim in them. He forced himself only to imagine his male friends when he was far away from sleep, when there was no chance of his tortured imagination betraying him or Tilt-nose taking him unawares. In the evening he began to visit scenarios where he was sitting in his home on Vulcan as a young boy, his mother comforting him gently after some incident with the local schoolboys. He allowed himself to tremble into her chest, expressing the emotions that were more suitable to a child than an adult, while she stroked his head and soothed him with soft, meaningless words. He found himself lying in sickbay, recovering after some kind of illness or assault, pretending to be asleep while he accepted the comfort of Christine Chapel’s soft hand stroking his, listening to her soft, murmuring conversation as if it was beautiful music. He had not heard a female voice in a long time, and this one made him want to curl into it and sleep in its comfort.

He began to remember how she had stood before him in one of the briefing rooms, under the influence of the Psi2000 virus, and confessed how she loved him, and instead of whispering his apologies he leant into her arms and forgot all of his disciplines and emotional restrictions, and let her stroke him and kiss him and soothe him with her love. He remembered waking to her presence in his rooms when the pon farr was burning over him, and instead of holding himself back from her he took her to his bed and lay with her and forgot T’Pring and her cold biological pull, and let Christine hold him in her arms until the pain and burning melted away. Those were some of the few times when he managed to sleep at least for a few hours without the nightmares coming to drag him back into reality.

  


((O))

  


Tilt-nose entered the cell. Spock did even bother moving from his huddled position. He was too tired, too weary of being pulled out of his imagination and fantasy back into this terrible place.

The guard came and crouched opposite him.

‘I’ve grown fond of you, boy,’ he said softly.

Spock did not reply. His treatment by this man did not match the definition of fondness.

‘I try other prisoners, but you keep calling me back, don’t you?’ he said, stroking the back of his hand down Spock’s cheek. He trailed his fingers up Spock’s face, caressing the contours of his ear, stroking through the soft fuzz of stubble on his head. ‘I know you enjoy me,’ he continued. ‘I know you want me to come to you.’

His fingers traced over Spock’s lips, then slipped over his neck, down onto his chest, lingering over his nipples. Spock closed his eyes, forcing himself to stay still and silent. He knew he should be numb by now to hands creeping all over him, crawling into the areas where he least wanted to be touched – but his revulsion meant every contact made his nerves scream their awareness. Tilt-nose leaned forward, putting one arm about Spock’s shoulders, one hand behind his head to cradle it, then pressing his lips hard over Spock’s, forcing his mouth open and probing into it with his tongue. He had never been kissed by Tilt-nose before, and he didn’t know how to respond except to passively let the guard explore his mouth.

‘Oh, you taste good,’ he said, flicking his tongue over Spock’s lips. He trailed his hand down Spock’s back, letting his finger stop just where the split of his buttocks began, gently stroking the skin there. ‘I wanted to ask you, can I do anything for you, boy?’ he asked, touching his lips to Spock’s shoulder. ‘You give me so much.’

Spock’s heart contracted, knowing precisely what he wanted to ask but horrified at the idea of asking favours from his abuser, and of giving voice to what was done to him.

Finally he asked, ‘Is – is it possible, sir – to stop the other guards from – from raping me?’

‘Now, you know not to use that word,’ Tilt-nose told him softly. ‘You belong to the prison, not to yourself.’

‘Please, sir,’ Spock whispered. ‘Please, whatever the definition, please stop them from touching me.’

‘You want to save yourself for me,’ the guard smiled, stroking his flank slowly, teasing his fingers over Spock’s hip, easing his hand past Spock’s hunched up leg to touch the skin just below his navel. ‘I can let them know you’re mine, boy, but that won’t necessarily stop them fucking you.’

A new thought crossed Spock’s mind – something he had been pondering on, but had not yet had the chance or perhaps the courage to ask.

‘Sir…’ he began tentatively. Tilt-nose waited. Spock stared at the hand touching him, watching the fingers as they stroked at the flat muscle of his abdomen. It was hard to concentrate, waiting for the touch to move lower down. ‘Sir, how long is a life sentence on Darkartia?’ he asked finally.

‘I don’t understand what you mean, prisoner,’ Tilt-nose replied, leaning in and tracing the outline of Spock’s ear with his tongue.

‘In – ’ Spock broke off, trying to work out how to speak of the system in the Federation, when he knew speaking of his life before his incarceration was a punishable offence. ‘In some places a life sentence is a set number of years, sir. Perhaps thirty or forty years.’

Tilt-nose laughed softly, and Spock’s heart sank. ‘A life sentence is a  _life sentence_ , boy,’ he told him. ‘You will die here, and your remains will be incinerated here and thrown outside the walls.’

Spock stared down at himself, for a moment relishing in that small amount of information he had unexpectedly gained – if there were walls here, he was probably being held on a planet surface. Until now he had not even known whether this facility was landbased or perhaps a unit somewhere in space.

Then the implications of Tilt-nose’s statement hit him, and his vision seemed to turn grey. He was thirty-eight years old. Supposing he kept his health, he could expect to live to around two hundred standard years. That would mean around one hundred and sixty years spent living in this cell, under this regime. In six years time, if his cycle was not unexpectedly lengthened or shortened by his hybrid physiology, he would undergo his second pon farr. He could expect to suffer it perhaps twenty more times in his lifetime. Who would he turn to when the time came? Would his only option be to bond his mind to that of his attacker? To link himself forcibly to Tilt-nose as he raped him? Or to die? If Tilt-nose came to him while he was in the fire – and he was sure that he would – it was inevitable that they would bond. The idea almost made him physically sick. How could he endure life with his thoughts and feelings laid bare to someone towards whom he felt so much hate? How could he endure life having an intimate knowledge of a man who could do such things to him? But of course, if he did that, if the doctors found out, then there would be the lobotomy… Or would they have ways of dealing with the pon farr? Would they strap him down and treat him with drugs? Castrate him to prevent it happening in the first place? Make him mate with another prisoner?

He closed his eyes, trying to replace his emotional response with the safe, grey ambivalence he had been sitting in before, distantly aware that Tilt-nose was brushing his hand down the side of his face again.

‘I’ve given you enough information now, boy – more than I should,’ he said. ‘Now I want you to do something for me.’

Spock waited, silent, head bowed down.

‘I want you to be different today. I want you to desire me. I’m not going to restrain you, and you are going to pleasure me, without the ring-gag, without your hands behind your back. You are going to touch and tongue every inch of me as if I am the only thing you want in this world.’

Spock finally lifted his head, a spark of incredulity piercing his apathy. Tilt-nose must have read his silent expression, because he continued in a suddenly harsh tone;

‘I can make life _so_ much worse for you, boy. You don’t understand how tenderly I treat you. I know people who would love to be introduced to your delights, who would show as much concern for your comfort as they would for an insect. … Now, get up onto your knees.’

Spock rose slowly, readjusting his position so he knelt on his sleeping mat, legs slightly parted, hands behind his back as if they were shackled. It was difficult to conceive of resisting, whether or not he was tied up.  _One and a half centuries_ , his mind whispered to him. He would outlive most of the personnel here, but no doubt there would always be someone ready to abuse him.

‘Good,’ Tilt-nose said softly, running a hand down his chest, tangling his fingers in his chest hair. Spock closed his eyes as the fingers reached his pubic bone, then slipped down to fondle his penis and testicles. The guard was using an unusual tenderness that only made it so much worse. Tilt-nose bent lower. He sucked Spock’s limp penis into his mouth, rolling it about his tongue, massaging at his scrotum and stroking the skin behind it with one hand. He stroked his tongue over the underside of Spock’s penis head, catching a part of it that made him shiver, against all of his effort not to respond. He bit his lip, willing himself not to get an erection, not to react in any way that might seem like encouragement.

After long, unsuccessful efforts at stimulation, Tilt-nose finally straightened up.

‘Don’t you want to get hard for me, boy?’ he asked, looking directly up at Spock’s face.

Spock dropped his eyes, trying to steady his breathing. ‘I – cannot, sir,’ he murmured. He didn’t dare utter a direct negative.

‘There are drugs for your problem,’ the guard said ominously. ‘One hypo, and you’ll get such a hard-on you’ll be begging for relief. I could give you something that’d make you want to hump an Aldebaran sewer worm. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, boy? You’d like to get hard for me?’

Spock had little choice but to say tonelessly, ‘Yes, sir.’ The thought terrified him. Forced penetration was one thing, but being brought forcibly into sexual heat, to see his own body rebelling against him, and being made to copulate with this man seemed a shame too great to bear.

Tilt-nose opened his trousers and pushed them down just enough to expose his genitals. ‘I want you to touch me with your hands,’ he said, his penis already beginning to engorge.

Spock hesitated, closing his eyes briefly. He looked at the painstick, clenched in the guard’s right hand, then raised his own hand slowly to touch the man’s genitals. He had had them in his mouth, had the penis plunged into his body, but he had never touched them with his hands before. His penis was soft and warm, flecked with the occasional hair. The testes were cool in their fleshy bag, the skin bumped like gooseflesh, contracting and relaxing again as he stroked his finger across it. He saw the penis jerk softly as it grew a little bigger, and he reached his hand to its growing hardness, closing his fingers hesitantly about the shaft. He began to move his hand slowly up and down, swallowing against his repugnance for the action.

‘Put your mouth on me,’ Tilt-nose said hoarsely, touching his hand to the back of Spock’s head.

Spock leaned forward slowly, fighting against his own reluctant muscles, bringing his lips closer to the organ that had caused him so much pain. His stomach lurched. He could not do it. The painstick was there, threatening agony, but he could not make himself take this man into his mouth.

‘Come on,’ Tilt-nose pressed him. ‘Be a good boy and do as you’re told. I don’t want to have to hurt you.’

Spock took a deep breath, pulling on his remnants of discipline to force himself to suppress his revulsion. He opened his mouth and pushed his lips over the stiff rod of flesh. He touched his tongue to the tip, then began to suck, pushing his tongue across the hot skin.

‘Come on,’ Tilt-nose urged him again. ‘Do I have to instruct you to do everything?’

Spock steeled himself, then leant forward, pushing the penis further into his mouth and moving his hand on the shaft at the same time. He found the most sensitive place on the head, and pulsed his tongue over it.

‘That’s it, boy,’ Tilt-nose nodded, touching his head. ‘Oh, that’s good… Come on, take it all in…’

Spock steeled himself, pushing his mouth harder down over the shaft, slicking his hand up and down on it as his head moved. Tilt-nose moaned. The animalistic noise made Spock freeze. He knelt there, motionless, with the end in his mouth and the rest clenched in his fist. Then he withdrew, and said in a shaking voice, ‘I can’t, sir. Please… I can’t…’

Tilt-nose sighed. ‘Get on your hands and knees,’ he said. ‘I’ll – warm you up, and then we can see what you’ll do for me.’

Spock obeyed slowly, turning onto all fours on the floor, raising his buttocks up and closing his eyes. The habitual cloth was used to wipe him clean, then tossed into the toilet pot. He felt the insistent point of the guard’s tongue pushing into his anus, moistening it for the assault. The man’s hand stroked over his back, then both hands firmly parted his cheeks a little more, and he felt the tip of his erection pushing firmly against his hole. Then Tilt-nose butted forward, and the full length of it slid inside. Spock grunted at the movement.

‘You like that, don’t you, boy?’ the guard asked softly.

One last spark of instinctive resistance took over, blanking out Tilt-nose’s threats, blanking out the consequences. Spock spun, fury suddenly overwhelming his mind. He was pushing Tilt-nose across the cell, raising his fist, beating at him relentlessly, a haze of murderous anger driving him to hit harder and harder. Tilt-nose was fumbling at his waist, and then suddenly the painstick was free, and he jammed it randomly against the first place he could hit. Spock dropped to the floor, the end of the stick pressed against his neck, the ability to think, or breathe, or do anything, suddenly leaving him in the wake of the horrific pain. Tilt-nose was slamming his free fist into his face, over and over, but the pain didn’t register against the agony of the painstick. He slipped away for a moment, back into the fantasy he had been living, back in his room on the ship. Then he was wrenched back again by the pain, and he screamed, writhing on the floor while the stick was pushed mercilessly against him.

Finally the stick was pulled away, and he lay trembling on the floor, whimpers of pain forced from his mouth as the aftershocks rippled through his body. He lay unable to resist as Tilt-nose pulled his legs up and pushed into him again, and finished what he had begun. As the ejaculate spurted into him, Tilt-nose lay down over him and said softly;

‘You never, _never_ , hit a guard, prisoner.’

He got up and readjusted his uniform, then opened a channel on the communicator at his shoulder, and said calmly, ‘Prisoner 614F has just assaulted me. Request punishment.’

Spock lay shaking on the ground, semen trickling out between his legs, staring at the ceiling above him. Then the transporter took him. The beam must have been modified to render him unconscious, because he knew no more until he found himself standing in something that he could only describe as an upright coffin. It was perfectly, absolutely dark and silent. The sides were so tight about him that he could not move his arms out sideways from his body, but every surface of the box seemed to be studded with points that pushed into his flesh with agonising sharpness. His head was pushed down by the ceiling above him and the wall in front of him, his back crooked over, his knees bent. There was not enough room front to back for him to crouch down, but not enough height for him to stand up. His knees pressed painfully onto piercing spikes on the front wall. His buttocks pressed onto an identical surface and if he tried to lower his weight at all the pain was unbearable. The box narrowed at the bottom to a width more narrow than his feet, so he could not rest his weight onto them properly. His toes were crunched up on the studded surface, curled under his feet, pain driving into them. He could feel bonds around his ankles, and a collar about his neck – even if he tried to readjust his position he would not be able to.

He realised that his face felt stiff and swollen, and he suddenly remembered Tilt-nose beating him as he lay on the floor. He ran his tongue slowly around his mouth, tasting the sharp copper of blood, and as he passed his lower left canine he felt the odd angle of a tooth – no, two teeth – that had been struck loose and were hanging on by a thread. Spock raised a hand awkwardly to his mouth and ruthlessly pulled both teeth out, letting them drop into the bottom of the box. It was just one insignificant physical loss in the catalogue of things that had been taken from him.

He could feel no other significant injury from the encounter with Tilt-nose, so he turned his mind back to his present situation. He had obviously been here for a very short time so far, because the only intolerable pain was that in his feet. Perhaps he had been deliberately brought back to consciousness as soon as he had been put in this place. Why would that be…? Because they intended him to experience his confinement in this place rather than to escape it in unconsciousness. Logic suggested that he would be trapped here long enough for the effects on his body to be highly significant. Spock tried to take a deep breath, to steady the surges of panic that were rising in him. But his lungs were too crushed to expand properly, and the air in the box was oxygen-poor, warm and stuffy. After the first ten minutes his thighs and feet and ankles began to cramp, his back began to spasm, his neck screamed with tension. He gasped in shallow breaths, each attempt curtailed by a sensation like a metal band about his chest.

He tried to ease his position by bracing himself on his arms, but he could get no useful purchase, and every movement only sent a sharper, burning pain through his joints. After half an hour he began desperately feeling about the box with his hands, trying uselessly to push the sides further away from him, to find an opening somewhere. After an hour he began to knock at the spiked walls with his fists. He swallowed any shreds of dignity he had left, and called out, ‘Please… Please, let me out. I beg mercy. Please…’

No one responded to his cries, and at last he fell silent.

A thread of logic seeped through his mind as he crouched in the dark. This was a transitory punishment, thus logically no matter how horrifically small the space or painful the confinement, he should not have to fear death. And he was safe from attack in here, no matter how physically punishing the captivity was. He could let his mind concentrate, without fear of interruption. He had to concentrate, he had to remember how to meditate. His sanity was all he had of his own left now, and he was still quite sane enough to know that it was being battered away every day. Perhaps the pain in here could actually be an advantage. He closed his eyes, setting his body to hold himself in position for as long as he could. He let himself feel the burning and aching in his joints, and began to focus on a simple pain suppression technique. For the first time in months the constant consciousness of the rapes began to fade into the back of his mind. He began to move away from his body and into a pure space where there was only his mind, with no flesh or bones or sinews to hurt. The peace and calm did not last more than a few hours before his body was forced to acknowledge its physical stress, but it lasted just long enough to give him hope that he could try again in the future to meditate, and perhaps to succeed.

He wasn’t sure how it was possible to fall asleep in the box, but eventually he did – a stilted, fleeting sleep that captured him for short moments before the pain and discomfort forced him awake again, jerking upwards from the spikes below his buttocks. He crouched in the darkness, thanking every moment of oblivion, almost sobbing every time he was ripped back into reality. The peace of meditation had fled him utterly now. He stayed in that state for hours, his body desperately trying to get rest and not being allowed to by the pain. He began to lose track of time, but he knew he had been in there long enough to feel raving thirst and gnawing hunger, for him to be forced to urinate into the bottom of the box, for faeces to fall softly onto his calves and heels. His head was dizzy with the need for rest. He felt as if he could not bear the aching in his muscles any longer, as if he would explode with the pain, but he was too tired now to control it and he had no choice but to endure it.

Finally he emerged on the other side of the pain threshold into a strange, dizzy, floating state, where bright lights flickered before his eyes and his ears sang with a high-pitched whine. He stopped caring about the agony searing through his limbs and back. He felt as if he was in another place, looking down giddily on himself, hysteria coursing through him at the pathetic sight. He found himself laughing aloud, tears streaming down his cheeks, wondering at the stupid frailty of his own body. The world was spinning around him. He was upside down, whirling as if he was in zero gravity. There were perfect, fascinating, beautiful geometric shapes in black and white spinning in and out in front of his eyes.

This was the place that his dignity had brought him to, hallucinating, standing in his own excrement, convulsed with transcendent agony, his own loathsome body betraying him because his mind would not allow him to give in to another man’s sexual desires. But try as he might, he could not thrust away his dignity. He could not give up the shame he felt at the memory of how he had been abused. He could not give himself willingly into the hands of someone who wanted to rape him and humiliate him. No matter how he tried, his mind would always betray him by clinging to dignity, and his body would always betray him by feeling pain when the punishment came.

He was floating in his hallucinatory haze, watching colours and patterns swirling around him, when the end of a tube butted at his mouth. He parted his lips automatically, feeling them crack and split as he moved them, and the tube pushed into his mouth. He tasted the bland gruel he was used to eating, and he shamelessly sucked at it, pulling as much as he could into his mouth and swallowing awkwardly through his crooked over throat. Before he was satiated the tube withdrew. A cold horror descended over him as he realised the logic of what was happening. He had been in here for two days, at the least. He would survive at least four days without liquid. If he was being fed in here, then they did not mean to let him out any time soon.

Panic drenched over him, and he began to scream, beating at the sides of the box until his hands bled, sobbing out for mercy. He could not endure much longer in this tiny box. He could not endure the pain, or the crushing smallness of the space, or the constant exhaustion of holding himself on his bent over feet. He whispered hopeless pleas for help, he prayed to gods he had never believed in, he promised to invisible captors that he would always, always obey from now on.

It was over a week before he was let out of the box. He wasn’t certain of the length of time he had been held in there – he wouldn’t be more sure until the day of the shower gave him a frame of reference. At the point he was let out he was barely even sure if he was alive or dead. He rematerialised without warning in a heap on his sleeping mat, sobbing silently and shamelessly, shuddering with relief, touching his torso and face with his hands as if he could not believe in his own existence. His knees and feet and buttocks and back were studded with bruises and cuts and pressure sores. His legs and back were so cramped he could not straighten out. His toes were fixed in their curled up position, unable to flex.

He pressed a hand to the floor next to him. Despite the self-inflicted cuts and bruises on his hands, his arms were the only parts of his body that had not really suffered in the box. They were a starting point for recovering normality. He lay on the mat, silent after the hysteria had left him, trying to recall the calm he had found in his brief period of meditation at the start of his punishment. He needed to think through his body, joint by joint, and try to ease out the pain there with his mind. It would be a long process, but it was another step on his quest to regain control of his mind.

It was three hours before he could lie flat on his back, and another two before he could stagger up onto his hands and knees to move about. Then Tilt-nose was there in front of him, saying, ‘I want you to apologise to me now, prisoner.’

Spock stayed where he was crouched on the floor, eyes on the ground, and whispered through dry lips, ‘I – am sorry, sir.’

The man stroked a hand softly over his head, crouching down to Spock’s level. ‘Poor boy. They wanted to keep you in there for the full two weeks, you know. I had to fight them to get them to let you out early. I couldn’t stand the thought of you trapped in there.’

Spock felt surging anger. He wanted to scream,  _You put me in there, you sent me there, you hurt me until I had to hurt you back, and then you sent me to that place…_ But he pushed the screaming rage down until it was a tiny pebble inside him, and parcelled it away to deal with it later.

Tilt-nose eased his hands down, starting to massage Spock’s aching neck and shoulders, stroking his spasming back. He couldn’t help but lean in to the touch as it eased his pain. The arms closed around him, hugging him tightly, and he found himself pressed against the guard’s clothed chest, listening to the beat of his heart under his ribs.

‘I’ve missed you,’ Tilt-nose said. He pressed his lips to the top of Spock’s head, stroking down his back with one palm.

Spock’s heart lurched as he leant against the man’s chest, his mind whirling between gratitude for his early release and a desperate need for the comfort of the arms about him, and the knowledge that the person comforting him was the person who brought all this pain upon him. He hardly knew what to think any more. Tilt-nose was the only permanent person in his life – the only person he could rely on, or appeal to for anything. He was strong. He could protect him if he chose to. And it was so good to just feel the comforting touch of another person. He realised that his eyes were seeping tears as he sat there. He felt as if he was going mad with confusion.

‘Are you going to thank me, boy, for saving you from all that suffering?’

Spock closed his eyes, and whispered, ‘Thank you, sir.’

‘And have you learnt not to fight me now?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Spock breathed.

‘Well, I’ve got a little present planned for you anyway – a punishment of my own – just in case you haven’t quite learnt.’ He leant close to Spock’s ear, to say, ‘I told you I’ve got friends who’re a little rougher than me, and you’ll be seeing them soon. They’re quite eager.’

Spock trembled, against all of his effort not to, closing his eyes as he tried to push away the panic that promise conjured. ‘I have learnt, sir,’ he whispered, hating himself for the begging tone. ‘Please, no more punishment…’

‘Will you service me willingly now? Without the restraints?’

Spock’s heart clenched in his chest, his urge for self-preservation screaming at him to nod, to do anything to avoid more pain in the future. But he heard his mouth utter the words, ‘No, sir, I cannot. It would be better for you to chain me, sir.’

Tilt-nose laughed, thrusting him away from his warm embrace. ‘Maybe I will. But I don’t think you need chaining right now, do you, since you can barely move? So let’s see if a period in the stress chamber makes you a better fuck, eh? Get up on your knees.’


	5. Chapter 5

The ‘present’ came when Spock was just falling into deep sleep, one week after his release from the stress box. He had learnt to always have one part of his mind alert for guards in his room, even while asleep – but this entry was so swift he was barely awake before he found himself held up under his arms and slammed against the cell wall. He breathed in sharply against the pain as his lip split against the wall, struggling to resist the urge to turn and fight his assailant.

‘Nice to meet you, prisoner,’ a man’s voice said just behind his head. It was no one he had heard before. ‘We were told you needed a little lesson. We’ve come to give it to you.’

Spock closed his eyes, swallowing hard. He could do nothing but remain calm and silent, and try to assess the situation. He thought there was more than one man behind him – the one pressed up hard against the length of his body, and another one or two in the room behind him. He had no chance of fighting, even if he did not fear the repercussions so badly. He tried to close his mind off, thinking of standing on the ship’s bridge, thinking of analysing the starfield on the viewscreen, trying to remember exactly how to analyse different star types without instruments. The man behind him was speaking, but he pushed the noise away, made it part of the general murmur that tended to prevail on the bridge in relaxed situations. Then his forehead struck the wall sharply, and he was pulled back to the present. He thought he could feel blood beginning to trickle down from his temple, to join the flow from his split lip.

‘Do you even know what sadism is, boy?’ the man asked harshly, obviously continuing what he had been saying, pushing his body harder against the wall.

‘Yes, sir,’ Spock managed to say hoarsely. No matter how subjugated he was he still could not help a spark of dry irony. ‘It is what I endure every day in this prison, sir.’

He grunted as his head was slammed again against the wall. Blood sprang from his nose, making a vibrant green smear on the white surface.

‘ _Sadism_ , boy, is what I enjoy. Sadism is making you hurt – a lot – for my own pleasure. Sadism is fucking you while you sob out with pain and beg me to stop. Get it?’

Spock nodded stiffly, finding it hard to move his head at all against the fingers that were clenched at the back of his neck. He wished in some ways he didn’t understand, but he did, all too well.

‘It stinks of shit in here,’ the man said abruptly. ‘Is that from that bucket over there?’

‘Yes, sir,’ he muttered. He had grown so used to the smell of his toilet pot that he barely registered it anymore.

‘You expect me to fuck you with that stench in here?’

‘I – do not ask that you fuck me, sir,’ Spock murmured quietly, repeating an idiom that seemed highly appropriate for what was done to him. Intercourse certainly wasn’t, since it implied a reciprocal relationship.

The man laughed shortly. ‘Well, you don’t exactly get the choice in here, do you? Rope him up,’ he said tersely, and Spock stayed pressed against the wall even as the weight on him moved away, passively resisting the hands on him by the tension in his body. It didn’t help for long – he was blinded by a thick, stifling hood pulled over his head and tied at the neck, while another of the men lashed his wrists together with a bitingly tight cord. He found himself with his arms hauled above his head, the rope somehow attached to the wall, and he stood there, panting, resting his forehead against the wall and waiting for the attack to begin in earnest. He had been hauled so high he had to balance on his tiptoes.

‘Turn him round,’ the man said, and hands roughly twisted him so he was standing facing them, a sense of vulnerable anticipation shivering through his stomach and thighs.

A new voice spoke, presumably to the others in the room. ‘Surprised he’s still got a physique, after being holed up in here so long.’

‘His species stays quite strong naturally. It’s very – useful.’ A hand brushed over his stomach, then down over his penis, and the leader said, ‘Well, I like the way he looks, stretched out like that. He’s going to make a good fuck. Looks good and tight. He’s tense enough, anyway…’

There was chuckling in the room.

‘It’s almost a shame to damage him…’

Spock waited, breathing in stale air through the bag over his head in short, tense breaths. It was impossible to breathe through his nose – he presumed from the throbbing pain that it was broken. It hurt even to have the light weight of the bag touching it.

The silence continued. He knew that the waiting was part of it, deliberately there to make him imagine the pain to come, but he could not help imagining it. Would the torture be physical or sexual – or both? He could feel ripples setting up through his body as his skin goose-bumped in anticipation, his thighs tightening, his scrotum pulling up towards his body, his stomach and pectoral muscles clenching.

Finally, it came – the high-pitched whisper of something slicing through the air, and then the sharp, burning shock as something that felt like electrical wire cut into the flesh of his chest. He gasped in breath, but held himself still after that first flinching recoil. He could bear this pain. He would bear this pain. It could not be as bad as the long, aching, unending pain of the stress box. Something this sharp at least reminded him that he was alive, and owned his own responses.

It came again, and again, and again. He could not work out if the welts on his chest were bleeding, or whether he was imagining the tickling, trickling feeling of blood on his skin. Then it moved lower, slicing into the shivering softness of his belly, cutting across from the left, then from the right, then the left again in an unending rhythm. He found himself grunting with each stroke, trying desperately to keep himself from screaming or crying aloud.

Then he felt his first hint of unbearable pain as the end of the wire just caught the root of his penis, and he twisted instinctively, sucking in air in a way that made him seem to sob.

‘Well, that gets to you,’ the man’s voice said softly, and Spock cursed himself for his mistake.

The lash came down again, deliberately catching his genitals this time, aimed so that his thighs took none of the force. Spock tried resolutely to stay silent, his muscles corded with the effort, but after the tenth stroke of the lash he flinched again, breath hissing through his teeth. He could feel his penis engorging purely in response to the blood flow brought to the area by the whipping. The next stroke came upwards, hitting his testes full force, and he convulsed forward, a hoarse cry pushed from his mouth. Dizzying sickness grew in the pit of his stomach. The pain built until he could not distinguish the gaps between strokes. He struggled to control himself, but suddenly his efforts were no use, and he vomited into the bag that was cinched around his neck, feeling the bitter smelling liquid run down his chin and gather where the bag was tied. He could barely think any more. They were laughing at him. He was urinating as the pain made him lose all control.

Then, when all he was aware of was dizzy, nauseous pain, he realised that the whipping had stopped, and he was left shaking against the wall, pain throbbing through him with each beat of his heart, the sharp scent of vomit flooding his senses every time he breathed in.

‘Enjoy yourself?’ the man asked, close to his ear.

Spock tried to clench his teeth against the trembling, fighting to steady his voice before he spoke.

‘N-no, sir,’ he whispered finally. Then, without conscious thought, his mouth betrayed him, gasping out, ‘Please…’

‘What? Please stop hurting you? That wouldn’t be any fun at all, would it?’ At Spock’s lack of answer, he gave him a swift lash of the whip. ‘ _Would_ it?’

Spock drew in breath, forcing himself to reply. ‘No, s-sir. N-not for you, sir.’

‘Well, you needn’t be afraid,’ he added, cupping his hand under the Vulcan’s throbbing, bleeding genitals. ‘We won’t be using these now. We’ll have to make use of other parts of you.’

Spock found himself swiftly turned round again so that the heat of his whipped torso was pressed against the cold wall. A hand grasped roughly at his buttock, exposing his anus, but he could only think of the threat in relation to the way it hurt his pulsing groin.

‘Well, you’re certainly no virgin, are you?’

‘No, sir,’ Spock murmured. He had to swallow hard on the sudden, inexplicable urge to weep until he burst. How could he take any more of this?

‘Put him on the floor. I want him on all fours. Like a dog. Brace his elbows, lock his balls.’

Spock remained silent as he was manhandled like an inanimate object, until he was bent over as the man described, his tied wrists attached to the floor with straight braces up the backs of his elbows so he could not bend them. Then the clenching sense of humiliation built in him as rough hands pulled at his bruised and throbbing scrotum, held some kind of yoke against the backs of his thighs, and locked the device tightly about the soft bag, above his testicles. Spock moaned aloud at the pain the rough handling brought, but it wasn’t until it subsided somewhat that he became aware of the device’s purpose – to prevent him from straightening up without unbearable agony. He already felt dizzy with pain, and now the degradation was pulsing through him too, as he knelt there yoked like an animal. It was unbearable to be seen like this. All he wanted to do was collapse onto his side and be left alone in his pain, but he knew he would have to endure this attack for as long as his abuser willed it.

‘You think you’re something, don’t you?’ the man said. ‘But you’re not. You’re nothing – you’re a piece of meat on the floor for me to fuck. This room – it’s just a coffin to keep you alive in until your time runs out. You’re worth nothing to anyone. Your _only_ purpose here is to hold still and take cock when someone feels the need. That’s it. Do you understand that, boy?’

Spock nodded. He could argue with what had become the truth.

‘You don’t fight, you don’t resist,’ he continued. ‘You _just_ take it. That’s all.’

Spock nodded again.

‘I’ve got a lovely device here,’ the leader said in a measured tone. ‘A ring that sits just below the head of my cock. When it’s activated the inside of the ring enhances pleasure. The outside…’

Spock sucked in breath, waiting. Part of him didn’t want to hear what the outside did, but an equal part wanted desperately to know what measure of pain to expect. Then something touched him. The ring was rolled firmly over his lower back, and he hissed his pain through clenched teeth. His analytical mind told him it was probably some kind of electrical charge stabbing into his skin. His nervous system merely told him that if the pain was applied to the inside of his body he would not be able to stand it in silence.

‘Stand either side of him,’ the man said. ‘I don’t want him moving.’

Spock heard the other two in the room move closer, and felt the rough fabric of their clothes pressing against his sides. He waited, feeling his legs tremble against all his efforts to control. Hands touched him, kneading and spreading his buttocks, beginning the familiar ritual of inspecting what was about to be used. He held his breath, trying to get through that terrible moment of anticipation as he waited for the inevitable. Everything became focussed on that one small area of his body. Then he felt the unmistakable soft pressure of an erect penis touching his sphincter. He knew what to do. He had to stay still, to relax and accept the intrusion. But he did not want the pain…

He breathed in deeply, steadying himself, trying to draw himself away from the humiliating attack that was about to happen. This man was going to draw pleasure from his pain, and the less pain that he showed the less he would win.

It drove into him as if someone had inserted live electrical cable into his body. His entire body spasmed, a grunt of pain forced through his resolutely closed mouth. He could tell that the spasms only increased the pleasure for the man behind him, forcing a firmer pressure onto his penis as he surged inside. Spock found himself glad of the dark bag over his head, protecting him from having to concentrate on controlling his facial expression as well as his audible responses. He gritted his teeth on the shuddering pain as the man withdrew and pushed in again, but he couldn’t stop the reflexive gasp as his muscles convulsed. Finally he lost the strength to control, and found himself screaming pain at each plunge.

Then it was over, the erection abruptly pulled out of him, and he was crouched there, bent on all fours, with slow trickles of semen and faeces running down onto his tightly restrained testicles as his body strained uncontrollably to empty itself of the fluid.

‘All yours,’ he heard the leader say through ringing ears. ‘I’ve got what I wanted from him.’

Spock moaned, almost entirely absorbed in the sphere of his own body, where there was nothing but pain. But he became dimly aware of the movement around him, of the other two in the room muttering crudities to each other about what they were about to do to him. Something inside him collapsed, and he choked out, ‘Please, please, sir, let me be now. I have learnt. I promise I have learnt, sir.’

‘Oh…’ the leader said softly, near to his head. ‘You’ve learnt? Don’t I decide when the lesson ends?’

‘Please, sir…’ Spock whispered desperately. ‘I have learnt…’

The bag over his head was gripped in a firm hand, his head wrenched back, a knife slitting a hole in the fabric precisely over his mouth.

‘Please…’ he tried again.

‘You make this _good_ , or you will feel pain, I promise,’ one of the other men said.

He heard fastenings being undone, then the head of an unwashed erection pushed at his lips. He could not help but resist, pushing his lips together over his clenched teeth. The bag was jerked backwards sharply, pulling the vomit-soaked material against his face.

‘Open your mouth and take it, you fucking half-breed,’ the man growled, pushing harder. ‘Take it, or I’ll break your fucking jaw, and you’ll take it anyway.’

He had to open his mouth to breathe. And he didn’t know that he could stand the prolonged pain of his mouth being put to the use that it so often was with a broken jaw. He parted his lips automatically, letting the length of the rod slide in, forcing himself to submit as his only means of self-protection. He felt it butt blindly at his back teeth, then re-aim to take advantage of his throat. He began to suck and tease at the flesh with his tongue, trying desperately to repeat processes that he knew were pleasurable, pushing aside the humiliation that came with his almost-willing performance. The penis began to push deeper, pulling out and thrusting in again. Each time it rammed in his nose screamed with pain. He could barely breathe. He increased his ministrations, as the only logical way to hurry the process, until the man finally gave a deep groan, and came into Spock’s throat. He swallowed stiffly, the only thought in his mind being a desperate wish for this all to be over. The taste of the thick liquid made him nauseous, as always.

‘Please,’ he whispered again as soon as his mouth was free. He was barely appealing to the men gathered around him any more. He knew there was no point. Words, blame, self-hatred were revolving in his mind, beginning to block out the sounds around him. _Nothing…Nothing but orifices, organs. Nothing but flesh, kept alive for nothing but their desires. A convenient port._ He knelt still, unconsciously licking semen from his lips, staring into the black bag. He waited, dully hearing snatches of sentences. _Stretch him …he ever done a Menorian? … See how far you can stretch him… How deep’ll he take it…_ Then something touching him, behind him again. Firm hands gripping his hips. Something pushing into him, far harder and larger than anything he had taken before.

There was a moment when it seemed it would be impossible – and then his body gave way, and Spock screamed aloud as the organ ripped its way into his body.

It wouldn’t stop… The hardness kept on ramming into him, tearing him a little more with each plunge. Each time his body jerked forward with the force, his legs straightened a little, and the yoke on his thighs tore against his testes. Each time the pain of the tearing inside and the strain on his testes made his mind dizzy with the effort to control. He was moaning and screaming almost simultaneously, casting his head about in a frenzied, mindless attempt to find something to bite down on, to try to make it a little more bearable. He sobbed words out, but even he didn’t know what he was saying. The screaming made his own ears ring. He could hear nothing else.

Then he was lying on the floor, released from his bonds, gasping air in through the torn bag, trying desperately to steady himself to silence.

He was alone – he was sure of that – but he had to stop the sobbing. He had to stop it as much for himself as anything else. He fumbled with numb fingers at the black bag, finding himself unable to untie the knot. Eventually he simply ripped it where it had been cut, and let it fall back like a hood.

He knelt on the floor, staring down at himself in amazement, tracing his fingers just above the deep green welts that covered his torso. He gazed without touching at the bloody mess of his genitals, the pain of which forced him to hold his thighs apart. He stared about himself at the smears of his blood and faeces on the floor and wall, at the patches of semen and urine and vomit around him. Nothing in the room was clean, least of all himself. How could his body produce such filth?

He pressed his palms to the floor, taking in a deep breath. The pain still throbbed through him, pulsing in his genitals, aching in his rectum, burning across his chest and face. He could hear his blood whooshing in his ears. And one more thing… The steady drip of blood from between his legs, squeezing from his ripped anus. He took in a sharp breath, suddenly feeling dizzy. It was not the thought of the blood – he at least still had enough control not to faint from squeamishness. It must be the sheer lack of the precious fluid. There was certainly enough of it smeared about him and pooling on the floor beneath him.

He had begged… How could he have allowed himself to beg, when he knew there was no mercy to be gained?

He moaned, resting his head onto the ground, trying to control the growing faintness. He felt the vibration of a transporter beam take him, and then he was on his feet, falling, uttering some kind of inane sound as arms caught him and roughly rolled him onto the shocking cold of a metal table. He lay still, trying desperately to lose the sense of vertigo, unresisting as his wrists were restrained and his legs were hitched up in stirrups to allow the doctors access to his worst wounds.

He was going to be sick… His eyes were hazed over with luminescent blotches of colour. His ears were filled with a high pitched whistle. He could not let himself be sick… He could not…

The room blacked out for a moment, and when it reformed someone was roughly swabbing a cloth about his neck, muttering in disgust. Against all of his efforts, he had vomited.

He cried out as a painstick was touched to his flank. Even here, supposedly a medical sanctuary, the painsticks ruled.

He closed his eyes, willing himself to control. He stayed passive as someone turned his head back and forth, inspecting the bruises. He gritted his teeth as a rough hand touched his nose, working it sideways, confirming it was broken by making the bones grate. His stomach lurched again as his penis and testicles were roughly examined, and given a cursory sweep of some kind of healing accelerator – obviously the damage was great enough to merit intervention. Then he had to clench his teeth viciously against gut-deep moans of pain as some kind of cauterising instrument was inserted into his rectum to seal off whatever was bleeding. His legs were spasming involuntarily, and finally they restrained them to the stirrups to stop him moving. Then, mercifully, he passed out.

  


((O))

  


Kirk waited every day for Sarek to contact him with news of his investigations. The first morsel of useful information was that most of the top security facilities on Darkartia were placed in inhospitable environments, unsuitable for any other use. Then, after months of fruitless searching and waiting, he had contacted again with information about Facility 2719 itself, telling Kirk that it was imperative that his informer remained anonymous. Apparently it was somewhere in the south of the planet, somewhere surrounded by mountains, and it was a place that year round saw nothing but ice, blizzards, and packed snow. Somewhere that remained dark for a good proportion of the year. Kirk suspected it was an ex-guard who had given the information – supposedly even guards were not trusted with the locations of the facilities they were beamed to, but they were at least allowed outside.

‘So,’ McCoy said impatiently as soon at the Captain had relayed that information to him. ‘When do we go get Spock out of that place?’

Kirk placed two glasses of Saurian brandy on the desk in his quarters, then sat down heavily in his chair.

‘Not yet,’ he said firmly. ‘We can’t just take the ship on a joyride and break him out of prison, Bones.’

‘Jim, you _saw_ the condition he’s in,’ McCoy began heatedly. ‘That was months ago. He could be in any state by now – ’

‘I _know_ , Bones,’ Kirk said tersely. ‘I know he’s suffering, and I hate it. But if I just turned the ship around now and went after him I wouldn’t get ten light years. Now, we’ve got a string of missions coming up – one of which will take us near Darkartia. I’ve spoken to Scotty and Sulu about disguising our flight path, and they think that when we get within four light years they can falsify enough data so that it seems that we’re continuing on our planned path, when actually we’re taking a detour to Darkartia. They’re working on sensor baffles that will hopefully keep us hidden from Darkartian sensors long enough to find Spock and get him out. Scotty’s trying to work out a way to increase warp power just long enough for us to sprint away from there faster than the Darkartian ships can follow. Uhura’s researching legal challenges to his imprisonment to make sure that once we have got him they can’t take him back.’

‘And when they do demand him back?’ McCoy demanded. ‘What do we do then?’

‘We mount every legal argument possible – and if that doesn’t work, we – well, I guess we jump ship, Bones – or at least Spock and I do, since I’m the culpable one for this escape attempt and they’ll want my hide as much as they do Spock’s.’

‘So, we jump ship – what then?’

‘ _We_ , Bones?’ Kirk echoed. ‘You’re not going to be in trouble. Are you saying you’d go into hiding just for Spock and me?’

‘Yes, well, no one else knows that half-human, half-pixie physiology like I do,’ McCoy muttered. ‘And Spock’s going to need a doctor – that much is certain.’

‘Well – I can’t say you wouldn’t be welcome, Bones,’ Kirk smiled. ‘But I’m hoping it won’t come to that. I don’t much fancy the idea of spending the rest of my life denying my identity and waiting to be caught out.’


	6. Chapter 6

Spock lay on his side on sleeping mat, staring at the space just in front of him. He found that he could readjust his focus to look at different points in the empty air, despite there being nothing there to see. There was an odd satisfaction in knowing just how many levels there were between him and the wall to focus on – the possibilities of points in space to gaze at were almost inexhaustible. It gave him something to do. Three weeks after his encounter with Tilt-nose’s ‘friends’ he still found it difficult find the energy or pain suppression techniques to sit up through the day, especially after the relentless six hour exercise period where constant walking was preferable to the punishment of the painsticks.

He blinked. Something had moved. But there could be nothing to move in here…

No. His super sensitive hearing had picked up a slight noise. Something like … buzzing? Then he saw it again. It was an insect – something like a fly, something the size of a small fly. It flitted past his eyes, and he moved them to follow it.

Too slow… He was too dull even to track the path of a fly with his eyes. He blinked, and forced himself to find the insect again, and to watch it move. How had it got in here? It must have come in through the forcefield somehow… Perhaps small things could traverse the field. Smallness was obviously an advantage. It made one safe from attack. The guards couldn’t abuse a fly. They could kill it, but they wouldn’t be able to make it suffer as he did. Perhaps if he could make himself very, very small he would be safe… Perhaps he would be able to pass through the force field. If he could reduce himself to mere molecules…

He rubbed a hand over his face, trying to recall himself to common sense. There was no way out of here. It was becoming more and more likely that he never would get out of here. But there was this insect in here with him…

He kept watching it as the minutes trickled by, trying to muster himself to a scientific evaluation of the life-form. When his evening food appeared he dabbed a tiny drop of the liquid onto the wall, and watched the fly investigate it. It seemed not to see it as a viable foodstuff, and Spock could not argue with that decision. Perhaps it was best. Despite his urge to keep the creature alive he could not help a jealous reluctance to share his scant nutritional allowance. Disgusting as the gruel was, he was kept hungry enough to force himself even to lick the bowl clean just to be sure of the calories. But if it didn’t eat then how would the fly live? Probably it would die anyway – he knew that. In three days time the shower would drown it. Even if it didn’t he could not imagine how a creature like that would continue to survive in this sterile cell.

He blinked sleepily. He was constantly tired at the moment as his body tried to heal itself after that horrendous night. Despite the fact that he was obviously in great pain his abusers did not let up. Tilt-nose was perhaps a little more gentle in his penetrations, but still he bled after each visit. His chest and groin were still streaked with healing welts.

He watched the fly for hours as it circled the cell, butting at the ceiling where the light came from. Then finally it descended and alighted on the rim of his toilet pot, moving about with an air of interest. It disappeared briefly below the rim, the buzzing as it occasionally took flight resonating against the sides. Spock stared, suddenly disgusted. It was going to lay eggs in his toilet pot, it was going to infest his cell… He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to kill the creature. He couldn’t kill it… He could feel irrational emotion welling up in his chest – fear, for some reason; repulsion; empathy. What could he do?

Then there were maggots, welling up out of the pot, swarming across the floor towards him. He pushed himself back against the wall in panic, thrusting his hands out against the flow. They were crawling over him, pushing into his mouth, into his anus, invading his body. He screamed, clawing at his mouth, trying to scrape them away. He was on his hands and knees, trying to get away from them. He could feel them, hard in his rectum.

Then the hardness pulled away, and the maggots that were touching him were hands, and he blinked and shook his head, seeing Tilt-nose next to him, his erection hard and unfulfilled, being thrust back into his trousers.

‘Prisoner, what is it?’ he was snapping. ‘What is it?’

Spock gasped, trying hard to see the reality around him. There were no maggots. Just Tilt-nose next to him with his hands on his shoulders, staring at him with something that looked like concern.

‘The insect, sir,’ he managed to gasp. ‘There’s an insect… I saw… I saw…’

He didn’t know how to explain what had happened. He didn’t know how to express how such a nightmare or hallucination had assailed him simply from seeing a fly enter his toilet pot.

Tilt-nose stood up and went to the door of the cell. He touched the panel outside. There was a pulse of energy that made Spock’s skin tingle, and something dropped to the floor in front of him. He stared in horror. It was the fly, dead, its legs curled up underneath it. He began to shake, pressing his hands against his mouth. He hadn’t meant for it to die.

Tilt-nose came back to him, kneeling down and putting a hand against his cheek.

‘The insect’s gone.’ He stared at Spock’s face, and he tried desperately not to not to meet the guard’s eyes. ‘Prisoner? It’s gone.’ He paused again, then shook his head. ‘Go to sleep. I’m too busy to fuck you now, anyway.’

‘Please…’ Spock whispered.

He didn’t want to be left alone, but there was no way to beg company. He wasn’t sure if he had been asleep or awake a moment ago, but the fear was creeping over him that he had been awake, and hallucinating, not dreaming. Perhaps he was going mad. He couldn’t be alone… Losing his sanity was the one thing he feared most in this place, more than any of the abuses that were perpetrated on him. There was only one way to stop Tilt-nose leaving. He put a trembling hand out, touching his fingers to the guard’s waistband.

‘Please,’ he said again.

Tilt-nose stared intently at him. ‘I know you by now, boy,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘You’ll never be willing.’ But he undid the fastening under Spock’s hand as he spoke, pushing his clothes down from his hips. ‘Come on,’ he said, hooking a hand behind Spock’s head and making him bend down towards his groin. ‘Get your mouth round that. Make it good for me, and I’ll stay a while.’

Spock closed his eyes, bending forward almost willingly until his lips touched the hot waiting flesh. He sucked the soft organ into his mouth, teasing his tongue about its salty taste. He would do this. He would do it rather than be left alone with his mind ready to betray him. He forced himself to keep his jaw relaxed as he felt a hand slip between his legs. He would have to tolerate Tilt-nose touching him. As the fingers began to tease and stroke at him he tried to cut himself off from the tingling response from his genitals.

He felt the penis becoming hard in his mouth, responding eagerly to his sucking. He knew by now how to make it feel good for whoever was using him. He closed his senses down on Tilt-nose’s small gasps and moans, dedicating himself resolutely to prolonging the man’s pleasure for as long as possible before he let him reach climax. When finally he came, he came explosively, almost shuddering with his gratification. Spock swallowed quietly, keeping his eyes closed, trying desperately to close his mind as well to the fact of what he had just done. He became aware of the hand between his legs again. It was clenching hard over his genitals, spasming unconsciously as the guard’s mind closed down to focus solely on his own climax. He stayed still, not allowing himself to react to the painful grip. He could hear Tilt-nose breathing raggedly, one hand on the back of his head, the fingers pressing into his skull. He could hear the guard’s heart thudding, feel it through the pulsing of his blood. After a few long minutes he tried to move his head, but the guard’s hand stopped him.

‘No, stay there,’ he said firmly. ‘I like you there. Put your mouth back on me.’

Spock closed his eyes, laying his head back and taking the moist, flaccid penis back in between his lips. If he wanted company, this would be the price he would have to pay. He tried to ignore what was in his mouth, withdrawing into himself to try to control the creeping instability in his mind. He knew exactly why the hallucination had taken the form that it did. Despite his desperate wish for another being to share his captivity with, every person who came into the cell harmed him in some way. Even the interior parts of him were not safe from their predations. The fly had been a threat to him as much as a brief blessing. He didn’t have the resources to share what he had, or to protect himself from illness or harm. The interpretation of his vision was not difficult. The fact that his fears had manifested themselves as such a vivid, palpable hallucination was what disturbed him to his core. He didn’t know how to protect himself from such deterioration when every day he felt his ability to control his mental processes slipping away.

He felt himself tremble, and forced himself to relax. He let himself feel the legs pillowing his head, the cloth of the trousers under his ear. He was not alone. He was so used to the forced sexual contact, used to the fact that he had no choice, that he could sometimes push it out of his mind. No matter who this person was, what he had done, he was not alone. He had one person at least who was constant in his life – one small piece of solidity to cling to. He suddenly realised just how achingly he missed all of the people that he knew in his life, that he had no hope of ever seeing again. He had imagined them continuing just as they always did, but the awareness suddenly hit him that he had no idea what had happened to them since he had been brought here. His parents – his parents were old, his father was already suffering the effects of his age. His friends on the  _Enterprise_ – how many of them had been lost to missions gone wrong? Was the ship even still intact? Was Jim still alive? A hard ache rose in his throat. It would make no difference – alive or dead, they were dead to him. Or was he the one who was dead, buried here, cut off from anything that meant life to him? He would be better dead, because the only things from life left to him were pain and longing and misery. But he had long passed the point where he had enough control over his body’s responses to stop his heart or his breathing. He had no choice but to live.

He felt the soft flesh in his mouth growing hard again, forcing him to acknowledge that he was not just gaining comfort from a companion. He flexed his hands, then sat up a little, and asked almost inaudibly, ‘What must I do, sir?’

Tilt-nose smiled, feeling at his waist for the cuffs he always carried. ‘Kneel, and put your face on the floor, boy.’

As Spock obeyed he took the cuffs and secured his left wrist to his left ankle, his right to his right, so that he was forced to hunch up with his buttocks high and his face on the ground, the stretch of his arms helping to pull his legs apart.

‘I want you to get hard for me,’ he said, reaching his hand around Spock’s hip and taking hold of his pliant penis. ‘Get hard for me, and I’ll stay with you. Get hard for me and I won’t hurt you.’

Spock closed his eyes, resting his cheek on the cold floor, letting himself feel the softness of the hand straying between his legs. He was still so sore that he would do almost anything to get Tilt-nose to cause him less pain.

  


((O))

  


Something was starting to change in their relationship. Since his time in the stress box – in fact, since just before the incident that had condemned him to the stress box – Tilt-nose had begun to act with a perverted tenderness towards Spock. He held conversations with him, kept some of the more violent guards away from him, took him with more foreplay and caresses than before. But he visited more often as well, chaining Spock’s limbs as always and taking him, as soon as penetration occurred, with more rough violence than ever. Spock found himself hating the guard more than ever, but at the same time looking to him for approval, trying his best to please him to make his attacks less painful. It was as if the guard was his only friend in the prison – he was the only person he had any interaction with, at least. It was his voice he heard most often, the touch of his hands he knew best, the footsteps he could recognise without even looking up. It was he who spared him pain when he begged meekly enough, or caressed him when he was particularly pleasing in his sexual servitude.

Tilt-nose took anything as a sign – if Spock looked at him, didn’t look at him, if his eyes seemed directed towards his hips – which they usually were since he was forbidden to raise his head to him. Always he came, and always he made sure that Spock knew that he was coming at his bidding. Spock tried desperately to stop giving the signs, to stop doing anything that might be interpreted as an invitation, even though he knew in his logical core that there were no invitations – Tilt-nose would come anyway, whatever he did. But then perhaps it was his fault – it was his exotic alien features, his body that was still surprisingly well-toned, the way he tried to cling to his dignity – all of that was what attracted Tilt-nose to him over the other prisoners, and all of that was his fault. His logic was beginning to send him in circles, obscuring answers instead of giving them, betraying him instead of saving him. It was logical to submit, to save himself from physical harm. It was logical to resist, to save himself from psychological harm. It was not logical to fight – he had no power and he would be attacked anyway. There was no logic in his situation – none at all, and that was almost impossible to bear…

He began to see the weekly shower as his salvation. At the moment that the icy needles of water began, and for the next seven minutes, all else was driven out of his mind by the deluge, as degree by degree the heat was driven out of his body and everything was replaced by a cloak of numbness. He stood under the driving jets of water rhythmically scrubbing at his body with his palms and fingernails, cleansing every inch of skin that had been touched and stroked and pored over by Tilt-nose during the week, cleaning off the dried build-up of his semen and saliva and urine. Then the water snapped off again, and he retreated to the corner of his cell while the air jets took all of the cleansing water away.

Something strange was happening to his view of time. He realised that it was all very well counting hours and being aware of the weekly cycle – but he was losing the sense of how many of those cycles he had been through. He was forgetting whether it was months or years that he had been here. He was forgetting how old he had been when he had come to this place, and so could not guess at how much he had aged since he had been here. He guessed logically that the time numbered in the months rather than the years – but what was a month? Was it four seven day cycles or four eight day ones? Were those cycles measured by twenty-four hour days or twenty-five ones? For every prison month he spent four days longer than a Standard month – but for each day there was an extra hour. Eight extra hours a week, four extra days a month, another extra day made up by the spare hours… More than a day. A day and eight hours. Or was it a day and seven hours? What kind of day did he measure normality by? What had been the stardate when he came here? He couldn’t remember. He chided himself furiously for forgetting something so important, but there was nothing he could do about it now.

He lay on the floor of his cell, gradually realising that Tilt-nose was in there, touching his hip. His hand seemed to burn on his flesh. He gradually became aware that he didn’t know how long he had been lying like this – long enough to miss the exercise period, he was sure. He remembered stumbling back from yesterday’s exercise feeling cripplingly cold, his head pounding with enveloping pain. He had lain down on his sleeping mat then, and curled around himself, trying desperately to get warm. Then he had seemed to be burning with heat, sheened with sweat, and then freezing cold again.

‘I am ill,’ he said slowly, the realisation settling through his dulled mind. His sinuses were throbbing with pain, his chest burned each time he drew breath, his throat was raw from fits of coughing that he didn’t remember.

‘I thought so,’ Tilt-nose told him, putting a hand to his forehead. ‘You’re always hot, but this is something more. I didn’t have to chain you.’

Spock blinked, realising from the sensations and the wetness between his legs that Tilt-nose had taken him, and he had not even been conscious of the fact. At least that was a small mercy that this nauseating, dizzy, aching illness had given him. Then he was being lifted with surprising ease in Tilt-nose’s arms and carried to the door.

‘Request hospitalisation for Prisoner 614F,’ he said.

Then he was being lain on a bed which, mercifully, was not cold metal like the beds he had been on before, but covered with something like his sleeping area in his cell. Still there was no blanket or pillow, and still his wrists were chained to the sides of the bed, but the temperature in the room was dialled up to a heat that was at least comfortable, and there was a doctor bending over him with a scanner, and then injecting something into his arm. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem compatible with his physiology, and it made him abruptly sick. The doctor hit him for vomiting, and Tilt-nose – Tilt-nose was still there, he realised – was wiping his face, saying something angrily to the doctor, and then there was a commotion, and he was injected with something else, and then something else.

He stayed in that room for some days – he couldn’t tell how long, because he spent so much of the time slipping in and out of a dizzy, shivering, fevered delirium, coughing a mixture of mucus and blood, with a doctor periodically bending over him and tending to him. Then when the delirium left him he was back in his cell, incapacitated by weakness and a shuddering, searing cough – but he could tell at least that he was growing better, not worse, and when Tilt-nose came to him he did little more than simply sit with him, and touch his body with caressing hands.

  


((O))

  


‘Got it!’ Lieutenant Sulu snapped jubilantly, twisting round to his captain. ‘A shielded facility on the southernmost continent, in a valley between two mountain ranges.’

‘That fits the information we have,’ Kirk nodded, trying not to get his hopes up too far. ‘Chekov,’ he said, turning to the science station. Still it was odd not to see Spock standing there. ‘Analyse that facility, and report.’

There was a brief pause as Chekov leant over his scanner, and began relaying information;

‘Wery strong transporter shields, but indications of transporter activity inside,’ he reported. ‘Probe shielding is there, but veak – I can already pick up the transporter energy, and I vill be able to scan for lifeforms vith some adjustments. One stone outer vall to the compound, inner fences made of titanium alloy. The unit itself is approximately two square kilometres in size. Can’t vork out population exactly yet but – it is _big_ , Captain.’

‘Will you be able to isolate Vulcan life signs, Ensign?’ Kirk asked, trying to mask his impatience.

Chekov turned momentarily from the scanner, just long enough to meet his captain's eyes. ‘It should be possible – vith time,’ he nodded. ‘I vill do my best, sir.’

‘Well, he’s waited almost seventeen months,’ Kirk muttered, almost to himself. He turned his eyes to the picture on the viewscreen – a high altitude image of a bleak white continent, mountains viewed from above, and the asymmetric shape of a dark-roofed building in a shadowed valley. Only the very tips of what might have been guard towers caught the glare of frigid summer sunshine.

‘Sulu, can you get a close-up on that place?’ he asked curiously.

‘I can try, sir,’ Sulu nodded. With a few deft movements at his control panel the image shimmered and magnified, then magnified again, and again. ‘That’s as close as I can get without bouncing off their communications satellites, sir – and that would risk them detecting us,’ he said apologetically.

‘That’s fine,’ Kirk nodded, leaning forward in his chair, chin in his hands. At this magnification he could not make out fine details, but he could see the sharp contours of the huddled building in the centre of the compound, the pencil-thin lines of the inner fence, and the thick, fortress-like presence of the outer stone one. His eyes fell on a dark smudge on the snow, spreading out from the foot of the northernmost wall as an amorphous blot.

‘What’s that, Ensign Chekov?’ he asked curiously. ‘That dark mark outside the northern wall?’

Chekov peered into his scanner again, touching buttons to gain readings from the mark. ‘Sewage, organic matter – kitchen scraps, I think – general refuse, and…’ He straightened up from the scanner, his face grave. ‘Cremated remains, sir. A  _lot_ of cremated remains.’

‘Does Darkartia perform capital punishment?’ Kirk mused.

‘Not according to our information, sir,’ Chekov told him. ‘But this facility seems to be at least two hundred years old – at least, the outer valls are – the buildings are more recent. If most people are serving life sentences, then…’

He trailed off, leaving the rest unspoken.

Kirk sat silently, then said softly. ‘Consult with Mr Scott, Ensign. Find out if he can beam out a representative sample of that – waste – without the prison being aware. It’s not under the transport shield, is it?’

‘No, sir. I’ll speak to him now,’ Chekov nodded.

It took over an hour for Scott to work out an undetectable way of beaming out a discreet amount of waste – but finally he did, and it was now in the labs, under McCoy’s analysis. The results came surprisingly quickly – McCoy came almost at a run onto the bridge clutching a small sample container in his hand.

‘It’s Spock, Jim,’ he said.

Kirk felt as if his heart had dropped out of his chest. ‘Dead?’ he managed to ask.

‘No! Scotty managed to beam up three hundred samples from the waste – he concentrated on what seemed newest – surface material closest to the walls. My God, you should smell the stench in the lab! But I found this,’ he said triumphantly, holding up the small plastic container, ‘in with a load of other cells – skin and hair – filtered out of bath water, I think. It’s a bunch of skin cells and one or two body hairs, approximately two weeks old. These cells are definitely, positively from Spock.’

‘You can be that sure?’

‘They have Spock’s distinctive Vulcan-human DNA. It’s better than a fingerprint. It’s not just a Vulcan – Spock is being held in that facility, and at least two weeks ago, he was alive. I can’t vouch for what may have happened in the last two weeks, but he was living then.’

‘Any indications of his state of health at that time?’ Kirk asked anxiously.

‘From this?’ McCoy asked, raising his eyebrows. ‘Other than that he probably doesn’t have any major drugs or toxins in his system – no.’

‘Chekov, how long until you can distinguish individual bio-readings?’ Kirk asked impatiently.  
Chekov turned to him with an apologetic expression. ‘Captain, I am not Mr Spock. I vill do my best to be as quick as possible, but it could take a few days to isolate the necessary frequencies and analyse every lifeform reading in the place – longer if there are other Wulcans there.’

‘Ok,’ Kirk nodded. ‘Carry on – just remember Russia’s honour lies on your shoulders.’

‘Yes, sir!’ Chekov said smartly with a sudden brilliant smile, turning back to his instruments with renewed vigour.

Kirk smiled. Inwardly, although he hated the circumstances that had made it so, he was proud of how efficient and also how assertive Chekov had become over the last seventeen months of science duty.

  


((O))

  


Tilt-nose crouched near Spock in his cell, holding a hypo in one hand. Spock was knelt before him, with his hands fettered tightly behind his back, his ankles chained, desperately trying to fight the instinct to shuffle backwards, away from the hypo. He could guess what kind of drug was inside the ruby coloured capsule at the end. He knew that trying to avoid it was futile. Trying to fight would result in being returned to the torturous coffin cell – a fate which he did not believe he could endure, at least not with his sanity intact – and probably being subjected to the drug anyway, later. He barely had the strength to fight any more, physically or mentally. Since his illness any exertion made his chest bind and his head dizzy. He had very few resources he could call upon.

‘Trust me, you’ll enjoy this,’ Tilt-nose told him with a smile. ‘It’ll remove your inhibitions, liberate your body.’

‘I am a Vulcan, sir,’ Spock whispered. ‘The drug will not affect me as it does other men.’

‘You’ve taken it before? Surely not?’ Tilt-nose said with mock seriousness.

Spock shook his head. His voice was hoarse with restrained emotion. ‘Please, sir. If you understood what it means to a Vulcan to be seen in this way… Please…’

‘You’re not Vulcan – you’re not anything. I don’t care what it means to you, prisoner. I care what you will do for me.’

Spock drew in a shaking breath, lowering his head further, bending down towards the floor. ‘I beg of you, sir, please do not do this to me. I will do anything else. Please do not – ’

He felt the hypo press against the naked skin of his upper arm. The device hissed, and there was a split second of discomfort as the drug pressured through his flesh into his blood. Spock lowered his forehead to the floor in cold despair, waiting for the effects of the drug to take hold.

But he wasn’t even allowed that moment of privacy. He felt Tilt-nose grab him by the shoulders, pivoting him, laying him out flat on his back on the floor. A warm flush was beginning to spread through his capillaries, heating the surface of his skin. His chest began to tighten. He could feel the pulsing of his heart pushing blood into his fingertips, through his face and ears. He realised his nipples were standing up from his chest, hardened by the increased pressure. A tingle of sensation ran through his scrotum, causing it to crinkle and then relax again. He could feel the blood surging into his penis, even its own slight movement in the air as it hardened causing tremors of heightened sensation.

‘Kiss me,’ Tilt-nose insisted, bring his lips down over Spock’s. Spock responded automatically, moving his lips against the guard’s, the drug causing shivers of sexual pleasure to run through him at the action. For just this moment the touch was so soft, caressing his lips so gently. He moaned, a soft sound of pleasure.

Tilt-nose pulled away, satisfied.

Spock closed his eyes, biting the inside of his lip hard over a groan of shame. He tasted blood. He had bitten through his own lip. Then Tilt-nose was putting his hand behind his head, lifting it up, saying, ‘Look at yourself, prisoner. Look at what you have to offer me. Look how much you desire me.’

A second’s touch of the painstick to his hypersensitive skin, and Spock’s eyes jerked open. He stared down at his own organ, standing up stiff from his pelvis, flushed green with blood. There was already a drop of fluid at the end, wrought from it merely by the soft touch of the air. The skin was so tight that it hurt. He needed to have someone touch it, to release the pressure, but his mind was revulsed at the idea.

‘Such a thing I’ve been missing,’ Tilt-nose murmured. Fiery tremors radiated through Spock’s groin as the guard touched him with a fingertip. ‘Such an exotic colour, such a delicate thing…’

‘Please,’ he whispered again, trying desperately to keep back the sobs that were rising in his throat. ‘Please, sir, please do not make me do this…’

‘How about if you stop talking?’ Tilt-nose asked sharply, letting his head drop back to the floor. ‘Open your mouth – wide.’

Spock obeyed, eyes closed, his mind a seething whirl of misery. He felt the ring-gag slip in behind his teeth, holding his mouth so he could no longer shame himself by begging. The customary clip was pressed over his nostrils and he was reduced to breathing in through his gaping mouth. He lay staring at the emerald light through his eyelids, waiting for the first touch. Then he felt it – a fingertip, stroking along his penis, seeming to leave a trail of fire behind it. Shivers ran mercilessly through his inner thighs and belly. Then a hand gripped round his shaft, painfully tight, and began to pulse up and down. He moaned through the gag. He could not stop his body’s responses. He could not stop the responding thrill in his body to the touch of hands on him. He moaned again, unable to stop himself – a long, low moan of gratified sexual pleasure.

The hand pumped harder, and he felt the tension building. He was gasping with each stroke, unable to silence himself, his hands clawing into the floor beneath his back. Pain mixed with a pure, biological pleasure that surged through his body until he did not think he could take any more. He found himself thrusting into the fist that gripped him, desperately trying to gain relief even as his mind revolted from the idea. The stimulation screamed through his mind, overloading his senses. It was exquisite agony, and he couldn’t take it any longer. His legs jerked, he tried to pivot his pelvis away from the man’s hand, and was rewarded with a touch of the painstick that made him scream aloud.

But then the pumping stopped, and he was left lying there, bereft, his penis pulsing with the desperate need for release. Tilt-nose looked at him, and smiled.

‘You want it now, don’t you, boy? You dirty thing. You want to fuck me, don’t you?’

Spock remained silent. Tilt-nose touched his burning erection with one finger, and he whimpered in shame. He struggled desperately against the restraints, glancing down at his flushed, throbbing organ. If only he could hold himself in his own fist…

‘You want it, don’t you, boy?’ Tilt-nose repeated.

Finally Spock nodded, acknowledging his desperate need. It was as if pon farr had taken hold of him. He felt he would go mad if he did not get release.

‘You going to beg?’ the guard asked. His hand was a scant millimetre from Spock’s skin, ready to grip around it.

Spock nodded again, another whimper of need escaping him. He tried to form the words, ‘please, sir,’ through the ring gag, then as he was forced to wait again, attempted, ‘I beg.’

‘You beg?’ Tilt-nose repeated. ‘Is that what that _eg_ noise means? You’re begging me to pump you until you come?’

Spock nodded miserably. His mind was hazed with need. The fist closed again around his urgent erection, and he thrust into it desperately, a low groan of gratification in his throat. He pushed, and pushed again, heaving his buttocks off the floor in an effort to follow the teasing hand. He found himself pleading, ‘Harder, harder,’ one of the few words he could actually form with the gag in his mouth.

Then suddenly the pressure released, he felt himself climax in shuddering bursts, and he felt his own hot semen spurting over his face and body. There was an odd taste in his mouth, and he realised that his own semen was running over his lips, over his tongue and down his throat.

Spock sobbed aloud, feeling the sticky liquid begin to trickle down either side of his torso as his erection began to lose strength. He could still feel the drug in his body, and knew this wouldn’t be the end of his humiliation. He was stroked to hardness again. Then Tilt-nose was lying over him, the fabric of his shirt rough against Spock’s over-sensitive skin. The guard’s anus was hovering over his mouth, the scent drifting over the roof of his mouth every time he dragged in air.

‘Please me,’ he ordered, simultaneously allowing the painstick to touch Spock’s side for just long enough to show him the consequences of refusal. ‘Just remember, all I need to do is ask for punishment, and you’ll be back in that stress box – for longer than last time, too.’

Spock pushed his tongue out through the ring gag, licking and pushing into the puckered hole above him, suppressing his revulsion at the act and telling himself that it was his only option to avoid unbearable pain. He tried to suck the sweat-scented scrotum into his mouth as Tilt-nose shifted to push it over him, licking at the soft testes within until the man groaned. He could not help the acute awareness that Tilt-nose was performing the same process on his own sensitised scrotum, licking it, teasing at it with his teeth and crushing the testes in his mouth without regard for pain. Shame suffused him as he realised that his own turgid penis was responding again to the man’s manipulations, pulsing with heat, waiting to be touched. Then the guard moved himself a little further back, shoving his own erection into Spock’s mouth. Spock lay massaging the organ with his mouth as he had been trained to do, willing to do anything might speed the process and allow him to be left alone in his misery. The guard bit down hard over one of his testicles, but his scream of pain was stifled and he carried on sucking, because he could do nothing else. The only sensation he was really alive to was the burning need in his penis, the feeling as it was accidentally touched and rubbed by the guard’s chin and neck. He had to force himself to lie still, not to abase himself by trying to manoeuvre his throbbing shaft closer to the man’s lips.

Then he felt Tilt-nose’s mouth sink over his own painfully hard erection, the cool saliva a momentary balm before his mind became alive to the implications of the feeling. The guard settled down over him, his penis deep into Spock’s throat, moving his own mouth rhythmically about Spock’s erection, teasing into the eye at the head, tonguing the hypersensitive ridge further down, plunging his wet mouth up and down and lending force to the action with his hand. Spock sobbed, the noise stifled by the thick shaft in his mouth, as he felt himself being brought to climax again. Tilt-nose’s hard penis spasmed into his throat, and Spock came a moment later, feeling his own shaft butting against the roof of the guard’s mouth as it let loose spurts of semen. He swallowed numbly what Tilt-nose had deposited in his mouth, feeling the cloying semen give way to the briny taste of urine as the guard relieved himself into his throat.

Spock began to withdraw into himself, tears running freely down his cheeks, as Tilt-nose spat his ejaculate back onto his torso. Tilt-nose stimulated him a third time, and this time turned around to lower his buttocks towards Spock’s pelvis. And he knew he needed it. He was still burning with physical compulsion. He would have no choice but to satiate himself or suffer a pon farr like degeneration which would be unbearable to endure in these conditions. All he could do was satisfy his body while keeping his mind as far away from what was happening as possible.

Spock closed his eyes tightly, forcing visions into his mind. Standing on the bridge, looking into the cool blue light of his viewer.

He felt the head of his penis compacting against the guard’s tight sphincter.

He was walking through the corridors of the  _Enterprise_ , perhaps on his way to a briefing.

The head popped through with a squeezing pain, and he moaned as the rest of the shaft slipped smoothly into the cool, moist space.

He was sitting in his quarters, reading one of his antique novels, waiting for it to be time to leave for his duty shift.

The guard’s buttocks were pressed down onto his pelvis, his entire length trapped inside another man’s body. He could feel the muscular tube clenching about him, holding him tightly and firmly. The animal part of him wanted nothing more than to move his own throbbing flesh up and down in that tight grip.

He could no longer concentrate on the images in his imagination. The thrills were surging through his body again, the stimulation painful in its intensity. Tilt-nose was riding him, moving up and down rhythmically on top of him. His mouth pushed down over Spock’s own, and he could not close his mouth against the forced kiss that tasted of his own semen. The tongue probed into his mouth as Tilt-nose slammed down onto him again. Spock cried out, a sound that was more gratification than shame. Tilt-nose rode harder and faster, and Spock felt shame overwhelm his mind as the stimulation began to move him towards climax. He was aware of nothing but that tongue in his mouth, and the tight flesh gripping around his organ, and the abasement that wrapped around him as he realised that he could not stop himself from obliging this man yet again. He moaned uncontrollably as he felt himself reaching his peak, unable to stop himself pushing harder into the body above him, trying to bury himself as deeply as possible. At that moment, as his penis released jets of semen into the guard’s rectum, he hated himself as he never had before. If Tilt-nose had offered him a knife, he would have slit his own throat without hesitation. His body had betrayed him. His mind had betrayed him. He had shared with this man what no Vulcan would ever share outside of a bonded relationship, purely to avoid physical pain.

He was barely aware of the guard pulling away from his dwindling erection, releasing semen into Spock’s pubic hair and across his trembling stomach. He lay unresponsive as his legs were pulled up, and Tilt-nose satiated himself in Spock’s anus as he always did, whatever atrocity he had committed first. When the guard left he curled onto his side with his arms clenched around his knees, shaking with desperate misery. The burning desire had left him now, and all he had left was a cold, hollow, sick sensation through his entire body. He could not understand how he could bear further attacks like this one, which were sure to happen now, but he was equally sure that he could not bear the pain of punishment, and the inevitability of being forced into such acts afterwards.

He lay motionless for hours, his only consolation being that tomorrow was shower day. He ignored his food when it came, lying unresisting when the agonising pain came up through the floor into his body as the punishment for his disobedience. He could not sleep – he felt too exhausted. He drifted in and out of consciousness, sometimes staring at the forcefield at the front of the cell, sometimes staring at the light through his own eyelids, sometimes finding himself in fantastical situations that his analytical mind told him were hallucinations brought on by his continuing psychiatric and emotional impairment. He knew he should pull himself together, attempt to meditate, to restore his mind’s balance, before he allowed himself to plunge into madness. He should fall back on his tested method of digging his nails into the sores on his wrists where the cuffs had cut them, to let the pain jerk him back to sanity. But madness seemed preferable. If only he could be allowed to lie here in a fantasy of his own making, and never be pulled out of it by the physicality of his body…

Then the freezing blast of the shower hit him, snapping his mind back to a degree of control. He forced himself up onto his knees and crawled into the centre of the spray, letting it pummel over him. He scrubbed at himself until his skin felt sore, gasping the water into his mouth to rinse out the taste of semen. He rubbed ruthlessly at his own genitals, trying to cleanse them from the filthy feeling that never seemed to leave them. Then he tilted his head up into the chill water and let it slap across his face, its freezing cold pushing through his sinuses, biting at his ears, numbing the thoughts inside his skull.

The water cut off, and he stifled a sob. He was not clean. He never felt clean. He would never feel clean again. He bent down under the blast of the dryers, trying desperately to convince himself that he was clean, that he could not let his psychological weakness keep controlling him. But still, he did not feel clean.

Then the transporter hummed. His pot being returned after the shower.

Something was happening to his senses. He was losing his grip on reality. The clean, unbroken whiteness was blurring and changing into something more colourful. He couldn’t feel the floor beneath him. He was losing himself...


	7. Chapter 7

Spock was sitting naked on a carpeted floor that seemed unbearably rough after so long of smooth surfaces. He could see grey walls and patches of red, but he didn’t dare lift his head to investigate. He traced his finger over the edge of a smooth disc that was set into the floor, that he was half sitting on. It seemed familiar somehow, but it was nothing from the prison, so it could not be familiar…

There was a thudding of footsteps, booted feet like a guard’s, and Spock instinctively scrambled backwards, moving until he felt himself pressed against a cool wall, waiting for the jolt of the painstick and the click of manacles around his wrists.

He heard a voice saying, ‘We’ve got him, we’ve got him,’ and he trembled, waiting for the inevitable punishment for his attempt to escape. Then a blanket was pressed around his shoulders, and he clutched in confusion at the bright orange fabric. His flesh had not been covered in so long. The cloth was warm. But would he be punished for it? Then suddenly he heard a gasp of horror, and a voice that cut through everything, calling, ‘Spock! Spock!’

His name! His own name! And that voice… He whispered, ‘Jim?’, and suddenly warm arms were pressing around him, pulling him to his feet, hustling him forward off the transporter platform.  _The transporter platform…_

Spock finally allowed himself to glance up, catching fleeting glances of concerned faces, of people in red uniforms gathered about him, and of Jim there next to him in warm gold. His knees gave way, and he began to sink to the floor, and suddenly Jim was lifting him in his arms, rushing with him out of the room, and he found himself sitting hunched on a bed in sick bay, shivering, clutching the blanket against himself and trying desperately not to sob.

‘Spock,’ someone was saying clearly. McCoy. It was Dr McCoy. A wonderful, familiar face full of kindness. He lifted his eyes cautiously towards the concerned blue ones, then looked away quickly.

‘Yes, sir?’ he whispered instinctively.

He saw the doctor shoot a worried glance at Jim, then back at him. He knew he did not need to call McCoy  _sir_ , but it was so hard to break the habit that had been beaten into him. The word just came out as instinctively as breathing.

‘My God, what did they do to him?’ Kirk asked under his breath. ‘Naked, emaciated, cowed down…’

‘Spock, I want to give you a light sedation,’ McCoy told him in that same clear tone. ‘I know you don’t like drugs, but I want you to stay calm and relaxed while I examine you and ask you some questions. Is that okay with you?’

Spock glanced furtively up at him, then nodded silently. There was the hiss of a hypo against his arm, and he slumped a little, suddenly feeling warmer and strangely relaxed. He struggled to pull something into his mind, some important question he had been wanting to resolve for a long time. Finally he asked, ‘How long, sir?’

‘It won’t take long,’ McCoy said very gently.

‘No,’ he murmured. ‘No, sir, how long – how long in there?’

It was Jim who replied. The mattress depressed as Jim sat down next to him, saying softly, ‘Seventeen months, two days.’ Jim’s hand touched his arm firmly though the blanket. ‘But you’re home now.’

Spock slumped again, trembling, ruthlessly holding in the sobs that were shaking his chest and rising up into his throat. Then Jim’s arms closed around him, holding him tightly, and he fought against the instinctive terror of being restrained to lean into that warm chest and let himself be comforted.

But his mind was betraying him again. The only time he was pressed close to another being was when Tilt-nose came into his cell, when he was closed in that hard, cold embrace as he was manhandled into position for another assault. He shuddered. He wanted to vomit. He could not stop a whimper of confusion and fear escaping his lips. How long before his arms were wrenched behind his back? How long before he was splayed open on the floor with his most intimate parts displayed, while rough hands and mouth touched them as if they were public property, while that hard, hateful shaft rammed into him, careless of pain or horror or humiliation?

‘Spock, come out of it,’ Kirk said firmly, the use of his name calling him back to himself. This was Jim holding him. Jim, who had never hurt him without reason. He fought to steady his breathing, to get himself to the point where he no longer needed Jim’s arms to support him.

‘Bones, how is he?’ Kirk asked as Spock straightened away from his hold. He had never seen the Vulcan so completely cowed before, unable to look up, unable to control his responses. God only knew what he had been subjected to in his imprisonment.

‘He’s badly anaemic for a start,’ McCoy muttered, glancing up at the displays above the biobed. He held out his scanner towards Spock, and continued, ‘Showing symptoms of continued stress. Depression. Signs of prolonged malnourishment and dehydration. Muscle wastage. Your brain’s lacking some of the necessary vitamins and fatty acids, Spock,’ he told him. ‘That’s why you’re finding it hard to control and concentrate.’

He moved away and returned with a hypo.

‘This’ll start to restore the balance, but you’ll need time to feel the full effects.’

Spock nodded mutely, but he was overcome with relief that his inability was at least in part biological rather than psychological.

McCoy held out the scanner again, reading out the results as he found them. ‘Evidence of bruising, healed, healing and fresh. Ditto lacerations. A healing hairline crack in the left scaphoid bone – perhaps fifteen months old, but it’s been repeatedly stressed since then.’ His forehead creased in puzzlement as he held the scanner near Spock’s face. ‘Chipping of the teeth, five teeth missing, bruising and abrasion of the lips, tongue and throat.’

Spock dropped his face, listening mutely. McCoy would discover all the evidence soon enough. There was no point in speaking of it himself. His scanner moved lower. There was a long silence, then McCoy said shakily, ‘Jim, would you wait outside for a moment?’

‘Why?’ Kirk asked, immediately suspicious. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘Jim, please,’ McCoy urged him.

‘ _Bones_!’ Kirk protested.

Spock glanced up, almost meeting the doctor’s eyes. ‘It is all right, Doctor. I would rather Jim were here.’

‘You know what I’m about to say, aren’t you, Spock?’

Spock actually experienced a brief moment of humour – his first in a long time. ‘Believe me, I am very well aware of what you have found.’ Then he shuddered, recalling himself to proper behaviour. His tone could be misconstrued as insolence. ‘Sir,’ he added quickly, head bowed. ‘Sir.’

McCoy touched his arm – a lingering, warm touch that Spock found more comfort in than he would have admitted – then said, ‘Okay, Spock. Jim, there’s evidence of prolonged, systematic sexual abuse – repeated violent penetrations of both the anal and oral cavities.’

Spock froze. He had known exactly what McCoy was about to say, but hearing it spoken aloud in such precise medical terms somehow made it more real – something that had followed him from the prison back to the ship. He felt an overwhelming mental burst of anger that slapped over him like a wave – Jim’s anger, that he was struggling to contain. Then Jim walked away, left the sickbay, and Spock’s sensitive ears caught the sound of a fist being repeatedly slammed into something solid, like the wall. Despite the fact that he knew it was just Jim in his anger, he flinched away from the noise, used to the threats of the guards and the sound of their fists being slapped against something else as a threatening precursor to hitting him.

Spock hugged his knees up to his chest and rested his forehead on them, waiting for the storm to quieten, desperately trying to stop the memories, the sensations of it happening, from taking over his mind. He pushed a fist into his mouth to stop himself making a noise as the urge to sob overwhelmed him. He moaned softly, without even realising it, his body shaking all through, and then McCoy said gently, ‘It’s all right, Spock. You’re safe here now. It won’t happen again. It won’t ever happen again.’

Then Jim was back in the room, coming back to him and putting his arms around him without question, holding him tightly against the memories.

‘God, Spock,’ he murmured. ‘Good God, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

‘I – ’ Spock began, but he stopped, unsure of what he was going to say. He shook his head. ‘I couldn’t stop them, sir. I had no power…’

‘I know,’ Jim whispered.

Spock traced a finger over the scars on his wrists. He had tried more than once to break out of the cuffs, but he had never managed it. There were similar scars on his ankles where he had struggled against the bonds, whether they were clamping his legs together or pulling them apart. They had been made worse where he had deliberately abraded them, in an attempt to make the physical pain drive the mental pain out of his mind.

‘I’ll take them to the highest court in the sector,’ Kirk said through gritted teeth. ‘I swear to God, I’ll see those bastards in the harshest prison in the Federation, and I’ll be there every day to remind them that if it weren’t for the guards I’d skin them alive…’

‘Jim…’ Spock whispered.

‘Jim, don’t forget this rescue wasn’t exactly legal,’ McCoy put in seriously. ‘You know Starfleet decided to acknowledge Darkartian law.’

‘I know,’ Kirk muttered. ‘I know even being in their space is a violation, I know I’m going to be hauled over the coals.’

Spock lifted his head abruptly, his breath suddenly coming fast and uncontrolled, his heart racing in his side. The room was closing in about him, his field of awareness narrowing to be replaced by a dark blur.

‘Spock!’ McCoy exclaimed, bending to him and touching his arm. ‘Spock, what is it? Try to relax.’

‘Bones?’ Jim asked anxiously.

‘He’s having a panic attack,’ McCoy explained swiftly, releasing another hypo of sedative into Spock’s arm. ‘He doesn’t have the mechanisms to control his responses right now. Spock, calm down. Try to tell us what’s wrong?’

Spock gasped for air, trying with all his might to pull himself back from the crushing panic. Finally he managed to whisper, ‘Illegal rescue… Fleet could decide… They could send me back, Jim. I can’t…’

‘Over my dead body,’ Kirk said through gritted teeth.

McCoy put his hand on his shoulder. ‘Spock, they cannot –  _cannot_ – order you back against the evidence of the abuse you’ve suffered. There are statutes against condemning any Federation citizen to such cruel punishment. You know that. I’m detailing every scrap of evidence of the torture you’ve been subjected to, and  _no one_ is going to argue with that evidence.’

Spock glanced up at him doubtfully, and McCoy held out his medical scanner towards him again.

‘Tearing of the rectal muscles, internal bruising, deposits of semen on your body – yes, I know you’ve washed, but there’s enough there that I can use it as evidence. Scars from older rectal tearing that’s been treated – which means they were aware of your treatment and didn’t stop it. Bruising in your throat consistent with forced oral penetration. Bruising behind your teeth, damage to your teeth, consistent with some kind of jaw spreader. Bruising in the form of hand prints on your arms and legs. Welts on your torso and genitals – you were whipped?’

Spock nodded briefly, murmuring, ‘Once, yes.’

‘Once is enough. Scars from bite marks on your penis – that’ll match Darkartian dental patterns, I bet. A fresh bite on your scrotum that’s also seriously bruised the testicle beneath. Serious damage from restraints on your wrists and ankles. An untreated wrist fracture. Besides the mental trauma, the malnutrition… There’s evidence, Spock. There’s plenty of evidence.’

Spock nodded mutely, but part of him was wondering if he would ever feel safe again. ‘A transponder,’ he muttered suddenly. ‘Here,’ he said, pressing his hand to his upper arm. ‘Please, get it out…’

McCoy uttered a curse under his breath, reacting instantly to find the tiny capsule and cut it from Spock’s arm. He handed it to Kirk, who took it across the room and crushed it to dust using a heavy metal container as a hammer.

‘They can’t track you now,’ he promised, coming back to Spock’s side. ‘They won’t find you. Hell, if they did they’d have to go through me to get to you.’

‘Besides, we’ve got Sarek on our side,’ McCoy added. ‘And I can’t see him letting them send you anywhere near that place again.’

‘My father knows, sir?’ Spock asked faintly.

‘That you were in prison, that you were in a pretty poor state,’ Kirk nodded. ‘Nobody knew – the rest, Spock. If I’d known I would’ve torn the place down with my bare hands to get you.’

‘Spock, I’m going to have to take some intimate pictures of your wounds before I treat you,’ McCoy said seriously. ‘But I’m going to have to do it soon – like now. Are you happy to let me do that?’

Spock blinked, so unused to being asked permission for anything to be done to his body that the question threw him. Then he nodded again. He had spent so long naked, so long with the most private places of his body subject to the attentions of anyone who wished it, that he could barely conceive of denying McCoy permission to do what he liked. He got to his feet and dropped the blanket, moving automatically to the examination table in the other room, heedless of the startled glance of Nurse Chapel as he entered the room naked.

‘Spock!’ McCoy protested, chasing after him, Jim following close behind.

Spock lay passively on the examination table, and waited for his wrists to be restrained, staring up at the ceiling above him. But the doctor didn’t restrain him. He just went and got a sheet from a cupboard and draped it over his exposed body.

‘Spock, I’m not quite ready,’ he said softly.

‘Doctor,’ Chapel began, coming forward with concern clear on her face.

‘Spock, just wait there a second,’ McCoy said. ‘Jim, stay with him will you?’

‘Of course,’ Kirk murmured, moving to stand by Spock’s side.

McCoy took Chapel by the arm and led her out into the other room, making sure they were well out of Spock’s hearing range.

‘Christine, Spock has been horrifically sexually abused, through most of his captivity,’ McCoy said quietly. ‘There’s evidence that he was last raped as little as ten hours ago.’

She clasped a hand to her mouth, choking back a sob, trying to hold on to her professional demeanour.

‘He’s very confused,’ McCoy continued. ‘He’s deficient in certain nutrients and he’s having trouble controlling his mental processes. In essence, he’s acting like a human, but with a Vulcan’s photographic recall of events, and having had a Vulcan’s high level of privacy torn apart. I think he’s experiencing flashbacks, and having a hard time separating reality and memory.’

‘I see,’ Chapel nodded, just managing to keep her voice level.

‘I’m going to give him a thorough rape exam. We need to assemble as much evidence as possible to make sure that Starfleet won’t even consider sending him back to the Darkartians.’

‘Could they?’ she asked in horror. ‘Surely they wouldn’t…’

‘Not against the evidence that we’ll prepare, but technically Spock’s internment was justified under Darkartian law. Captain Kirk broke explicit orders to rescue him.’

‘I’m glad he did,’ was all Chapel could say. ‘What equipment do you want, Doctor?’

‘Get the holographic camera – I want images of all his injuries before they’re healed. I’ll need sterile sample containers and collection devices, and I want you to write down everything that I find, just to be sure.’

‘Of course.’

‘And I want full spectrum blood and body fluid tests, to check for any sexually transmitted diseases.’

‘I wish it didn’t have to be so invasive,’ Chapel murmured, moving away to collect what was needed.

‘I know,’ McCoy nodded. ‘But hopefully this is the last time Spock will have to suffer anything even half as invasive as he has done in the last year and a half.’

  


((O))

  


Spock lay with his mouth clamped shut as McCoy pulled a screen in front of the bed and prepared to begin his examination. His hands were clenched so tightly on the sides of the bed that his skin felt as if it was about to split over his knuckles.

‘Spock, are you sure you’re ready to do this?’ McCoy asked him softly, registering the signs of terror in his poise.

‘Yes, sir,’ Spock whispered.

‘Okay,’ McCoy nodded, not bothering to protest at the _sir_. ‘I’m going to give you a little more sedative, though. Christine, can you get me five ccs more of cyclodine?’

‘Of course, Doctor,’ she murmured, fetching the hypo and putting it into his hand. It was terrible watching Spock in such a state, and she was fighting to hold back her emotions.

McCoy released the drug into Spock’s arm, then asked, ‘Do you want me to do the more intimate exams last, or get them over and done with first?’

Spock breathed out, closing his eyes as the effects of the second dose of sedative washed over him. His body was more relaxed now, but his mind was still taut with terror.

‘First,’ he said quickly. ‘Please do it first, sir.’

‘Okay,’ McCoy murmured. ‘I’m going to have to raise your legs up in stirrups, Spock, so I can examine the area properly. Christine – ’

Chapel nodded, and began to set up the stirrups, noticing an obvious trembling set up in Spock’s limbs. He lay still and quiet, however, as McCoy gently lifted his legs up and set his ankles in the stirrups, exposing his bruised and damaged anus. His eyes were glazed, staring at the ceiling above, even though there was a sheet over his legs and he would see nothing if he looked down.

McCoy picked up the camera, trying to take the pictures he needed as swiftly and silently as possible. There was no disguising the beeps the camera made as it took the images, though, and Spock shuddered at each one. As McCoy carefully touched his genitals to expose the necessary areas to the camera Spock heaved a breath in as if he was about to be sick.

‘Now, Spock, I’m going to give you a local anaesthetic, and then I’m going to examine a little way inside your rectum,’ McCoy told him quietly. ‘You shouldn’t feel any pain, but you might feel some sensation. Is that all right?’

Spock didn’t reply. Tremors were rippling through his entire body. It was worse, so much worse, to be given the choice, and have to make the decision himself. His muscles were screaming at him to roll off the bed and run. His mind was consumed with the effort of controlling those impulses, reminding him of where he was and why he was being touched in this way. Finally he said through dry lips, ‘Proceed, Doctor. Please do not ask me any more questions. Just do what must be done.’

‘Okay.’

He felt the touch of a hypo, and then the most acute sensation died away from that hateful part of his body. He lay very still, trying to ignore the slight feelings as McCoy examined him, listening as he muttered his findings to Chapel, asking for certain instruments and drugs. He had expected to feel relief as his wounds were healed, but he realised that the physical injuries made little difference. No matter what he felt in that area, the pain was still just as sharp in his mind.

‘Okay, you can put your legs down now,’ McCoy said finally. ‘I’ve taken all the samples I need and healed as much as I can. I’ll need to come back later, though, when some of the swelling’s gone down.’

Spock lay silent as his legs were lifted out of the stirrups and placed back on the bed. Unconsciously he clamped his legs together, protecting himself as far as possible. He heard McCoy change his gloves, then come back to his head.

‘I want to look in your mouth now, Spock,’ he said, and Spock let his mouth drop open automatically, as if he was waiting for the ring gag.

‘Won’t take long,’ McCoy muttered, reaching a finger in towards the back of Spock’s throat. Spock gagged suddenly as it touched the top of his mouth, and turned his head to vomit over the side of the table. Chapel just managed to get a bowl under his mouth as he voided his meagre stomach contents.

‘Don’t throw that away,’ McCoy muttered, keeping a hand protectively on Spock’s head. ‘It’s all evidence.’

‘Of course, Doctor,’ Chapel nodded, too preoccupied with her sympathy for Spock to feel nettled that McCoy would even expect her to throw it away.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Spock murmured as McCoy turned back to him. ‘I had learnt to suppress that reflex. I don’t understand why…’

‘It’s all right, Spock,’ McCoy told him softly, realising with silent horror that Spock had had to train himself not to gag when another man’s erection entered his throat. Everything about this case made him want to go and smash his fist into something in unrestrained anger, but he had to stay quiet and calm for Spock’s sake.

‘Would you like a drink of water, Mr Spock?’ Chapel asked, coming to his side with a cup in her hand.

Spock stared at the blue cup as if it was alien to him, then reached out wordlessly and took it from her. He took a sip of the water, staring at the cup all the time, then gulped the rest down without hesitation.

‘Spock… Haven’t you had access to water recently?’ McCoy asked him in disbelief.

‘I – had gruel twice a day, sir,’ he whispered, rotating the cup in his hands as if was still unreal to him.

‘Nothing to drink?’

‘I had gruel twice a day, sir,’ Spock repeated, as if everything else was obvious. ‘It contained all nutritional requirements for prisoners.’

‘Not all,’ McCoy muttered disgustedly. ‘Not all, by a long shot. Now, can I try looking in your mouth again?’ he asked carefully.

‘I shall try harder to control,’ Spock nodded.

‘Okay. We’ll get the images first,’ he said softly, fetching a smaller, more manoeuvrable camera. ‘Just some of the bruising in your throat. There. And of the damage to your teeth. Okay,’ he said again. ‘I’ll try to do this without touching too much. Just keep your mouth open.’

He picked up a slim instrument and aimed the beam towards the back of Spock’s throat. Spock held his mouth rigidly open, feeling the sensation of the painful bruising he had learnt to ignore being gradually soothed and healed.

‘Now, I’m going to have to leave any dental work for now, Spock,’ McCoy muttered, carefully running a fingertip over his teeth. ‘You’re missing five – no – ’ he corrected himself as he peered in closer. ‘You’re missing six teeth, and one of them’s cracked in half. The chipping I can regenerate easily enough, but I’ll have to remove the cracked one, and to replace the others I’m going to have to take the genetic profiles of the corresponding remaining teeth and clone them, and that’ll take a few days at the least.’

He picked up his scanner again and held it close to Spock’s face. ‘At least you have no fractures in your jaw – I always told you you had a thick skull, Spock.’

Spock didn’t react to the subtle teasing, and McCoy shook his head, touching a hand to his arm. ‘We’ll get you over this, Spock,’ he promised. ‘You’ll be back on that bridge like you always were, annoying the hell out of me, saving the ship from untold dangers, telling Jim what to do when he’s got no idea.’

Spock turned his eyes briefly to McCoy’s face, an expression of disbelief flitting across his features.

‘You will, Spock,’ McCoy promised. ‘I know it seems impossible right now, but you’re only an hour out of that prison. You’re in a far better condition than others might be. You’ve got your sanity, the physical injuries we can heal, and the mental ones we can work on. They may have taken seventeen months of your life, but I’m damned if I’ll let them take any more than that from you.’

‘I – do not wish to lose any more of myself to them,’ Spock whispered.

‘Then you’ll have to fight, Spock, to get yourself back,’ McCoy told him firmly.

He nodded his head slowly. ‘I know. I – am trying.’

‘Good,’ McCoy said warmly. ‘That’s good. Now, I’m more or less done. Christine, can you put a support on his left wrist? That fracture’s going to need breaking and resetting – but not today. I’ll go get him something to wear.’

Spock lay silently as Chapel went to fetch a support and gently lifted his wrist to wrap it around the joint. She looked up, realising that his eyes were fixed on her movements, and smiled at him. As she met his eyes, though, his gaze flicked away and became focussed on empty space again. She sighed, adjusting the support carefully, then laying his arm back on the bed.

‘Does that feel better, Mr Spock?’ she asked, trying to keep her tone as normal as possible.

‘Yes, thank you,’ he replied quietly. ‘Christine…’ he added as she turned away.

She turned back to him, smiling gently. ‘Yes, Mr Spock?’

He seemed to be searching for words, never looking at her face, but letting his gaze at least stray towards her.

‘I – have missed – ’ he began awkwardly. ‘I – ’

Chapel touched his shoulder briefly, then quickly pulled away as McCoy came back into the room.

‘You can get dressed now, Spock,’ McCoy said, helping him to sit up on the bed. ‘I’m all done.’

He handed Spock a garment, and he merely sat there, staring at it, unable to comprehend what he was supposed to do.

‘They’re _underpants_ , Spock,’ McCoy said. ‘For you to wear, cover yourself up with.’

Spock nodded, then unfolded the garment and examined it vaguely, making no move to try to wear it.

‘Spock, did they not give you underwear in the prison?’ McCoy asked.

‘I have not been allowed to cover my body since my capture, sir.’

‘You must have had blankets,’ McCoy began. ‘Surely – ’

‘Prisoners do not have the right to privacy of any kind,’ he said as if he was quoting. ‘Their bodies are owned by the state.’

‘Spock, you’re not in the prison any more. You can have as much privacy as you like. Your body is yours, no one else’s. Now, let me help you dress.’

Spock sat passively as McCoy dressed him, garment by garment. When it was over he felt indescribably strange, sitting with all this cloth tight about him. He could not help a residual feeling of panic at breaking the rules so thoroughly as to be possessing so much, covering his body with all this cloth. He picked at the left sleeve, fascinated at the way it clung to his arm. He rubbed his hands down his front to the waistband of his trousers.

‘This will make it harder for them to take me – there, at least,’ he said abruptly, looking up at McCoy.

‘Spock, whoever it was who abused you, they’re not here now,’ McCoy said firmly. ‘You don’t have to worry about that any more.’

‘No,’ Spock said softly, but he sounded unconvinced.

‘Spock, I want you to come and have something to eat,’ McCoy said, hoping to divert his attention from the memories. ‘Then you can have a bath, and settle down in bed.’

Spock looked towards McCoy with a pleading expression in his eyes that brought a lump to his throat. ‘Can you make me clean?’ he asked fervently. ‘Can you make me truly  _clean_ ?’

‘We can remove every speck of foreign matter from your skin,’ McCoy promised. He didn’t see any harm in bowing to what might seem an irrational obsession with washing away the taint of the attacks. Spock had already washed himself, and there was still semen on him. ‘Now, if you want me to, I can recalibrate the medical transporter to Darkartian DNA, and I can remove even what’s inside you. I promise that when I finish there will not be an atom of anything – anyone else’s body fluids, skin cells – nothing left behind.’

Spock nodded, a noticeable relief spreading through his frame. ‘Please, do that for me,’ he nodded. ‘Let me be clean again.’


	8. Chapter 8

Chapel sat at the desk in the sickbay ward, going over the details of Spock’s case on the computer. She was not really supposed to be on duty, but she felt compelled to keep watch over the Vulcan, almost as if she expected him to disappear again at any moment. It was past midnight, and Spock was slumped in an exhausted sleep, hunched under the blankets in the dim light. The only part of him not curled up was his left arm, which was encased in a hypo-drip, pumping nutritional fluid into his vein as a safe alternative until McCoy could work out a food that would not upset a stomach used to only one type of meal.

It was like being a detective, trying to piece together the evidence gathered from Spock’s body and the small amounts of the experience that he had recounted verbally. There were plenty enough facts to convince Starfleet that he should never be sent back to Darkartia, but Chapel suspected that those were only scratching the surface of the abuse he had suffered. There was evidence from the retrieved samples that although there was apparently one serial attacker, there was also a number of others who had sexually abused him. Disturbingly, there was also evidence of Spock’s own semen on his body, of a sexual stimulant in his bloodstream, and of deliberate self-harm in the injuries on his wrists and ankles.

She scanned down the bio-readings again. At some point great strain had been put on his body’s main joints and spine, and it was obvious that day to day he had spent most of his time sitting still on a hard surface with his knees bent up to his chest. He had been denied certain vitamins and minerals essential to Vulcan health. He had been denied proper food. There was an almost unbearable irony in the fact that without his regular ingestion of semen he would have become even more dangerously malnourished. His teeth showed signs that he had not touched masticatable food throughout his captivity. He had been beaten and cut. He had frequently been subjected to some kind of energy weapon, possibly something like a Klingon agoniser.

The mental scans and reports were even more disturbing. They showed changes in sociability, focus, logical reasoning, emotional control. There was a massive loss of self-esteem, the confusion of a victim forced to rely on his abusers for everything. His body image was distorted, damaged by months of enforced nudity and sexual and physical abuse. There was a fear that showed itself every time someone approached Spock and he flinched, or refused to meet their eyes.

She turned suddenly at a noise of inarticulate muttering from Spock’s bed. He began tossing and turning on the mattress, clutching at the blankets and trying to throw them off. Some remembered instinct told him how to open the hypo-drip over his arm, and he wrenched it free. She rose from her chair, but as she did Spock suddenly gained freedom from the blankets and launched himself across the room, flailing out blindly, clambering across the other beds until he reached the corner of the room and cowered into it, sobbing, and then pressing his hands over his mouth to silence the noise.

She ran to him, hearing him whispering, ‘Please, sir, no, please. Please not again…’

Chapel knelt beside him and touched his arm cautiously, afraid of what he might do in his nightmare.

‘Spock,’ she said softly but clearly. ‘Mr Spock, wake up. You’re dreaming.’

His eyes darted about the room, glazed and panicked. Then gradually they began to focus, taking in what was around him before lowering back to stare at his hunched knees.

‘A dream…’ he began wonderingly.

‘Just a dream,’ she nodded. She reached out again, tentatively stroking at his arm. He seemed to welcome the attention, so she carried on, settling down beside him. ‘You’re back on the ship now. You’re safe.’

‘Christine?’ he asked in a whisper, reaching out as if her presence was a bubble he could burst by touching.

‘Yes, Mr Spock,’ she nodded. ‘It’s all right.’

Spock was silent for a moment, then he looked about again. ‘It’s dark. Is it night time?’

‘It’s 0200 hours. I can put the lights on if you want – you’re the only patient in here.’

‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘No… It’s only that – it was never dark there. It is – good – that it’s different here.’

‘Are you ready to go back to bed?’ the nurse asked him, seeing that he seemed much calmer now.

Spock nodded. He got slowly to his feet and began to walk back towards his bed. Then he stopped abruptly, his eyes tracking down the front of his sickbay overalls. For a moment an expression came over his face as if he was going to be sick.

‘I – I – Please may I go somewhere to wash, nurse?’ he said very quietly.

‘Of course, Mr Spock,’ she nodded. ‘Do you want me to come with you?’

Spock shook his head vehemently. A pall of shame seemed to have come down over him. The distinctive scent of semen caught her nostrils as he moved, and she suddenly understood. Spock had experienced a wet dream – or probably a wet nightmare, considering his recent ordeal.

‘All right,’ she said softly, letting him go alone to the bathroom. After he had disappeared she went to the store cupboard and found another set of clothes, then knocked softly on the door, and put the folded pile through for him.

As Spock emerged in clean clothes, she told him quietly, ‘Mr Spock, we found traces of an aphrodisiac in your bloodstream when we ran those tests. It’ll take at least a few more hours for it to work its way out of your body. Any – reaction – is probably due to that – nothing to do with your personal psychology.’

Spock nodded, gratitude for that information suffusing his face.

‘Do you want to go back to bed now?’

He nodded again, looking around briefly as if reminding himself of where his bed lay.

‘This room seems vast, compared to what I am used to,’ he commented.

‘What are you used to?’ Chapel asked, unsure in some ways if she wanted to know all the facts of his confinement.

‘My cell was…’ He blinked, trying hard to remember the measurements he had worked out so long ago, when it had seemed to matter. ‘I believe it was six feet by seven. Ceiling higher than I could reach. It was white, sound-proof, always brightly lit. And empty but for the toilet pot…’

‘You were alone?’

Spock nodded mutely. ‘Except for exercise, and…’

He trailed off, leaving the rest unspoken. Chapel nodded as he sat back onto his bed. It was hard to know what to say to revelations like that. She helped him back under his covers, then turned to the hypo-drip casing. Spock’s eyes flicked swiftly to the casing, his whole body shrinking away from it.

‘Please,’ he began. ‘Please do not put me back in that. I – cannot…’

‘It’s just a hypo-drip,’ she told him. ‘The doctor prescribed a nutritional drip for you, but you were asleep by the time we began infusion.’

‘Please,’ he said again. ‘I was always restrained in the prison hospital. I – need to feel safe here…’

She bent to examine the display on the casing, touching buttons to scroll through the details. ‘Reading shows you’ve had almost the full dose,’ she told him softly. ‘It won’t hurt to leave it off.’ She unclipped the device from the bed and put it on a nearby trolley. ‘There. I’ll leave you to sleep now,’ she said, turning to go back to her station.

Spock’s voice stopped her.

‘Would you – stay with me, Christine?’ he asked tentatively.

‘Of course, Mr Spock,’ she said warmly, getting her chair and carrying it over to his bed. ‘I’ll stay as long as you want.’

‘Would you…’ Spock hesitated, then shook his head, a veil coming down over his eyes. He could barely even raise his eyes to Christine’s face – to anyone’s face. Why should she understand his illogical requests?

‘What do you want me to do?’ she urged him. ‘I’m here to look after you. Just ask me.’

‘Would you – would you stroke my hand?’ he asked, keeping his face turned away.

‘Of course, Mr Spock,’ she said, her voice sounding almost tearful. ‘Believe me, I would do anything that might help to ease your pain.’

Spock closed his eyes, almost unable to bear the tenderness that he had grown to never expect. The touch of her fingers on his hand spread a warmth through his entire body. Without hesitation she leant forward to him and pushed her arms around his shoulders, lifting him up into a tight hug. Spock gasped in a shuddering breath and pressed his face against her chest, drinking in the scent of her body, the sensation of her soft dress fabric on his cheek, the firm touch of her hands on his back. He had grown to believe he would never feel such comfort again.

‘I cannot go back there,’ he whispered into her chest.

‘You won’t,’ she promised. ‘Whatever it takes, you will never, never go back there.’

  


((O))

  


When Spock woke Chapel was still sitting beside him, slumped sideways in her chair with her head on the mattress at his side. He lay for a moment staring down at her golden hair and the curves of her body. After seeing only men for almost a year and half, she looked almost like a different species, one without the power to threaten or abuse him. He wanted to trust Jim, and the doctor, to trust all those he had trusted before – but he could not ignore their similarity to the men under whose power he had lived for so long.

He forced himself not to dwell on trust and mistrust. He had to let his confidence in his friends grow, rather than be eroded away by everything he had learnt about men in the last seventeen months. Instead, he gazed about the room he was in. The mattress was soft and supporting underneath him. The covers were tucked up to his chin, keeping him at a comfortable temperature. He was wearing  _clothes_ … It was hard to believe in such luxury, hard to believe this wasn’t one of his fantasies – but those fantasies had always had something missing – some lack of warmth or comfort. This was  _real_ . He was on the ship, and he was safe…

He lifted a hand to his head. His scalp was still only covered by a very short stubble of hair, but the stubble on his face had gone. He noticed the scars and wounds on his wrists as he moved. McCoy had promised to heal them later today, along with those on his ankles. He had spoken of trying to erase those other scars, the ones left on his genitals from whipping and biting – but he could not think of that…

He reached out tentatively and touched the nurse’s hair as she lay sleeping. He had not touched hair like that in so long. It was so much softer and more pleasant than the rough pubic hair of the men who abused him.

He withdrew his hand, and tensed his body to stand up. Then hesitation overcame him. He had not been given permission to leave his bed. But… he didn’t need permission. He had control over his own movements. He forced himself through the hesitation and stood up. He padded over to the sickbay door on bare feet. It swished open automatically before him, and he stood staring in amazement at the long, empty corridor outside. He stepped out into that deserted space. His feet took him automatically on a route he had expected to have forgotten. He found himself standing in an empty turbolift, ordering, ‘Deck Five.’

Then he was walking down such a familiar corridor, staring at the fittings and doorways as if he could barely believe in their existence. He could see a doorway just a few metres away. His name was on the plaque beside it. He stepped to the door and it registered his bio-readings and slipped open. His quarters had not been reassigned! They had not even been sealed.

Before he could take in what was inside he heard a booted footstep in the corridor. Panic surged over him, and he stumbled inside before he could be seen. Even here, to his mind boots meant guards, and guards meant pain and humiliation. He moved without thought to the safety of the gap behind his desk, and crouched down into the space, waiting for the inevitable attack.

Nothing happened. The footsteps approached his door, and moved past without pause. He had not been seen.

He pushed his hands against the sides of his head. Illogical. It was illogical to believe that anyone here would hurt him. It had merely been a crewmember walking down the corridor. He forced himself to stand, brushing his hands over his clothes as he did. His clothes would keep him safe, anyway. He was covered, no longer advertising his body to anyone who saw him.

He looked slowly around his room. Possessions… He owned objects! Sometimes in his cell, in a reckless flash of need for something to call his own, he had thought of taking and hiding one of the cloths Tilt-nose used to clean him before the attack, dirty as they were. Just the thought of  _owning_ one little scrap of cloth had almost become a thing of obsession to him. But he had known that he could not risk it. He had known how much pain he would have had to suffer for one scrap of unclean fabric if it had been discovered.

But here… There were books here he could read at his leisure, art objects he could let his eyes rest on. There were fabrics and trinkets and furniture. Things clean and colourful… His lyre – he had almost forgotten about his lyre, sitting there next to his desk. Would he remember how to play, as he had instinctively remembered the route to his room? He touched the strings like a child touching something forbidden, and jerked his hand away as sound rang out into the room. It was too much… He could not bring himself to make unnecessary noise yet.

He straightened up, looking about again. His eyes fell on the decorative mesh that divided his bedroom from his living quarters, giving special privacy to the bed. He owned his own  _bed_ …

Spock moved into his sleeping quarters and touched his bed with his palm. The orange covers lay neatly across the mattress. His own dark blue blanket lay across the foot of the bed as it always had, personalising the space. Spock turned back the covers and slipped into his bed, hunkering down under the blankets and letting the fantasy he had played out in the prison become a reality. The softness and security were intoxicating. He was  _home_ . He was lying in his own bed, surrounded by the warm red drapes on his walls. His meditation statue was there by his bed; unlit, but still there.

He lay there for a long time, just relishing the feeling of being back here, somewhere that he owned.

Then suddenly his door burst open, and booted footsteps plunged into his room, and a voice was saying, ‘Spock, what the hell did you think you were doing?’

Spock was out of his bed without realising he had even tried to move. He was kneeling on the floor by his bed, trembling, his hands behind his back and his head tilted to the floor. His heart was beating so fast it made him dizzy.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he whispered. ‘I’m sorry, sir. Please, please…’

He trailed off, hopelessness washing over him. He was barely aware of where he was, of the clothes he was wearing. He was just waiting for the cold of the restraints, and the order to put himself into position for the assault.

‘Spock, I’m sorry…’

He recognised Jim’s voice, but he didn’t look up. He heard the flick of the intercom, and Kirk saying, ‘Bones, I’ve found him. He’s in his quarters – he’s fine.’

Then the footsteps came closer, and Spock tensed, his hands clenching behind his back.

‘Spock,’ Kirk said again, kneeling down in front of him. ‘I didn’t mean to shout at you. I’m sorry. We were just worried about where you’d got to.’

‘Please, sir,’ Spock whispered again, his mind horribly confused between the reality of the prison and the horrifying dreams he had had with Jim in them, raping him.

‘Spock, it’s all right,’ Kirk insisted. ‘You’re on the ship. I’m not going to hurt you.’

Spock did not reply. He was struggling with all of his heart to stop the shaking and try to acknowledge that he really was on the ship, and that the Jim in front of him was not the terrible person in his nightmares.

‘Spock, look at me,’ Kirk said softly.

‘Yes, sir,’ Spock murmured, lifting his head and directing his eyes towards Kirk’s chin.

‘No, Spock,  _look_ at me,’ Kirk repeated, putting his hand to Spock’s chin to tilt it upwards. The Vulcan flinched away as if he had been struck, a moment of naked fear in his eyes.

‘Spock,’ Kirk urged him gently. ‘Forget I’m your captain, forget I’m your superior officer. Don’t call me  _sir_ . I’m just Jim – your friend, Jim. I’m not going to hurt you. Just look me in the eyes, please.’

Spock clenched his fists into balls, staring at the floor. Finally he murmured, ‘I can’t…’

‘You  _can_ , Spock. They drummed this attitude into you. You can break out of it. They don’t own you any more – they don’t own your responses. Just once, look at my eyes. Nothing bad is going to happen, I promise.’

Spock flexed his fingers, closing his eyes and trying to bring back some sense of discipline into his mind. He lifted his head again slowly, pushing it past the half-tilted position it usually stopped at. His neck muscles felt odd, holding his head so erect. He fought against the instinct to look down again before he was punished. No one was going to punish him.

He lifted his eyes, shifting them slowly up Kirk’s face until finally he met the concerned hazel gaze. It was the first time he had looked into someone’s eyes since Tilt-nose had first stood over him, preparing to enter his defenceless body. Those eyes had been glazed over with psychotic intensity, no pity in them – just an overriding, intense lust. He shivered, trying desperately to clamp down on the memory. He was beginning to see the guard’s face, superimposed over Jim’s. He was being sucked into the memory of that first time, when his real nightmare had begun. A moan of terror escaped from his lips.

‘Spock,’ Kirk said firmly, and he blinked, seeing Jim’s eyes again, registering the benignity of his gaze. There was no disgust there. No cruelty. ‘I haven’t done anything, have I? I haven’t punished you for looking at me? I haven’t ever hurt you.’

‘No, sir,’ Spock said in a low voice. He knew he could never tell Jim about the dreams he had had. He was silent for a long moment, then he tried to explain, ‘I know you will not hurt me, Jim. But – I have learnt that to look up equates with pain, or humiliation, or – worse... I did not have the time to work out in each situation whether it was acceptable for me to look at someone or not.’

‘I know,’ Kirk nodded. ‘It takes a long time to unlearn an instinct. Come on,’ he said gently, touching Spock’s arm. ‘Come back and sit somewhere comfortable.’

Spock rose stiffly. He clambered back onto his bed. He could not bring himself to relax totally, but sat with his knees hunched up to his chest protectively. Kirk sat in the comfortable wooden chair by his bed, watching him with concern.

‘I thought I had freedom now,’ Spock said finally. ‘I didn’t think…’

‘I know – neither did we. We were worried because you were missing from sickbay. You do have freedom, Spock, it’s just you’re not exactly yourself at the moment, and we were worried about you.’

‘I am not going to harm myself,’ Spock said quietly.

‘Well – we weren’t totally sure of that,’ Kirk admitted. ‘Bones said those wounds on your wrists have been agitated deliberately.’

‘The – physical pain – sometimes helps to push away the mental distress,’ Spock acknowledged slowly. ‘I – could at least pretend that I owned my own pain. It was not the same as dangerous self harm. I – could not kill myself anyway.’

‘You – wanted to?’ Kirk asked carefully. That statement had sent ice washing over him.

‘At times,’ Spock admitted. ‘But I hadn’t the power. But pain – was one of the few resources I had left to help control my thought process. I lost the ability to meditate…’

‘I’m sorry,’ Kirk told him, touching his arm cautiously, careful not to alarm him with the contact. ‘I wish – I just wish we’d been able to get you out sooner, Spock. I’m so sorry.’

‘Kaiidth. What is, is,’ Spock murmured. He hadn’t brought that particular piece of Vulcan philosophy to mind for a long time. ‘What has been cannot be changed.’

‘But you can control your present,’ Kirk reminded him, his touch becoming more firm on Spock’s arm. ‘You can show those bastards that no matter what they did to you, they don’t control you any more.’

‘But they still do in some ways,’ Spock said in a low voice. He hesitated for a long time, then said shamefacedly, ‘W-when you touch me like that, Jim – I – I know you mean comfort, but I find myself expecting you to – to – touch more – take more – ’

Kirk’s hand pulled away as if he had been burnt, and Spock glanced sideways. ‘I am sorry, Jim. I don’t want to feel that. But I – simply do. I – know that you should touch me,’ he continued. ‘I do not want you to avoid it. I know that I will only learn the benignity of your touch by experiencing it.’

‘How can I, knowing what touch means to you?’ Kirk muttered.

‘Is this harder for you than for me?’ Spock returned, in a sharper voice than he meant to use. He drew in breath, forcing himself not to fall into giving the automatic apologies and pleas for leniency. Only he himself could draw himself out of these habits. ‘I – need your help, Jim,’ he said in a softer voice. ‘I need you to help me learn that I will not be harmed here.’

‘I know,’ Kirk nodded, putting his hand back to Spock’s arm, slowly and lightly. Try as he might, he could not shake the image of Spock as he had seen him on the transporter, naked and cowering down. He could not stop himself from imagining a muscular guard standing over Spock in that position, roughly trailing hands over his body, roughly pushing him to the ground and…

He forced himself to stop. Just the thought made him burn with anger, and he knew that Spock would be sensing such responses from him. Perhaps even in his unshielded state he would be picking up on the visual images that Jim was conjuring.

‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured. ‘I’m angry with them, Spock, not you. I can’t stop imagining it…’

‘Yes,’ Spock said abstractedly. The idea of what had happened to him being something that only existed in the imagination seemed like a blessing to him, not a curse.

‘Spock, I really ought to get you back to sick bay,’ Kirk said after a long moment of silence. ‘McCoy’s waiting to continue your treatment.’

‘I – do not know how to get back to the sick bay, Jim,’ Spock admitted slowly. ‘I – cannot trust those people in boots and uniforms. When I hear boots I – am so afraid of what is about to happen… I see things happening, in my mind… I feel them… And I do not wish to be seen in the corridors, to have people looking at me and knowing what I have been these last seventeen months…’

‘ _What_ you’ve been,’ Kirk repeated. ‘You’ve been a prisoner, Spock, through no crime of your own – that’s not a shameful thing.’

‘A sexual amusement, a useful place for men to satiate their lust,’ Spock murmured. ‘A subservient prostitute.’

‘You were _raped_ , Spock,’ Kirk insisted. ‘You didn’t do anything to encourage it, you couldn’t have avoided it. It wasn’t your fault.’

‘Perhaps not,’ Spock nodded, sounding troublingly unconvinced. ‘But when people look at me, that is what they will see.’

‘They’ll see a victim, if they see anything. But you know your medical details will stay confidential to sick bay, Spock,’ Kirk reassured him. ‘We haven’t told anyone what happened to you.’

‘Nothing stays confidential on this ship for long,’ Spock said quietly. ‘It will become known, if it is not already.’

‘Give me a moment,’ Kirk said. He went into Spock’s living area and flicked on the intercom. ‘Kirk to Lieutenant Uhura,’ he said, and the screen came to life. As he had expected, she was in her quarters.

‘Captain,’ she said, sounding a little surprised.

‘Uhura, I’m guessing because of your job that you’re au fait with ship scuttlebutt,’ he said succinctly. ‘I need to know what’s being said about Commander Spock.’

Waiting on his bed, Spock heard a long pause, and then Uhura said, ‘Truthfully, Captain? Some of it isn’t very pleasant.’

‘Truthfully, Uhura. It’s important.’

‘Well – er – one rumour is that Mr Spock was in solitary confinement and has severe psychological problems. Another is that he – had a homosexual relationship with a cell mate or a guard. Another is that he earned money in prison working – as a male prostitute. Some people are saying that he was raped by the other prisoners.’

‘Hang on a moment,’ Kirk said gravely. He looked round the screen to Spock, who was sitting on his bed with his arms around his knees, his eyes fixed on the bedclothes. ‘Spock, did you hear that?’ he asked.

Spock nodded mutely, then looked up. ‘I – would rather the truth than those rumours,’ he said very quietly.

‘Okay,’ Kirk nodded. He went back to the intercom and sat down in the chair. ‘Uhura, what I’m going to tell you is the truth of what happened. Don’t broadcast it on open channels – but can you see that people know the real story, and stop those rumours?’

‘I’ll do my best, sir,’ she nodded.

‘All right,’ he nodded. ‘I’ll try to be concise. Yes, Spock was kept in solitary confinement. The prison he was in has the reputation of being one of the cruellest on Darkartia in terms of how they treat their prisoners, and Spock’s confinement was definitely cruel. No, he doesn’t have severe psychological problems, but he is suffering the mental effects of malnutrition and of horrific physical, mental and sexual abuse. He didn’t have a ‘relationship’ with anyone, but it is true that he was raped – by the guards – very frequently and very violently. He didn’t do anything willingly, and he was tortured if he resisted. _That_ is the truth of what happened to him. Now, I’d rather people didn’t gossip about him at all, but if they do, I’d rather it was accurate.’

There was a long moment of silence. Kirk could see the horror on Uhura’s face. She lifted a hand to wipe away a tear, then nodded. ‘I’ll do everything I can to kill the rumours. Will you – would you tell Mr Spock that my thoughts are with him?’

‘I know,’ said a very quiet voice, and as Uhura gasped Kirk turned to see Spock standing shakily behind him, one hand on the chair back. ‘Thank you, Lieutenant.’

She nodded silently, stunned by the vision he presented, shaven of his head hair, missing teeth, emaciated and seemingly haunted by inner demons. Finally she got possession of herself again, and said softly, ‘I’m so sorry, Mr Spock. If there’s anything I can do…’

Spock hesitated, then said, ‘Could you use your ingenuity, Lieutenant, to clear the corridors between here and sick bay, so I can return there unseen?’

‘Give me five minutes,’ she requested. ‘I’ll think of something.’

Sure enough, five minutes later, Uhura’s voice came onto the intra ship tannoy, announcing, ‘Please clear corridors S6 on Deck 5 and S3 on Deck 7 immediately for radiation decontamination. Entering these corridors in the next fifteen minutes will present severe health risks.’

Kirk looked at Spock with a grin. ‘A lady of her word, Mr Spock.’ He held out his hand. ‘Shall we go?’

As they entered sick bay McCoy came to meet them, his expression grave.

‘Er, Spock, I just let Sarek know that you’re safe,’ he said softly. ‘Just that – nothing else.’

Spock nodded, his eyes cast down at the floor.

‘He – er – he wants to speak to you,’ McCoy continued. ‘I told him you might not feel up to it, but he’s pretty insistent. He’s still onscreen in my office.’

Spock took a shaky breath, and nodded. ‘I have a duty to speak to him,’ he said quietly. ‘It seems my father played a large part in my rescue.’

‘You don’t have to speak to him, Spock,’ Kirk said, touching his arm. ‘You don’t have to talk to anyone you don’t want to.’

‘I must,’ Spock said firmly, moving towards the office.

‘Do you want one of us to be there?’

‘No,’ Spock replied almost tersely, moving quickly through the door and letting it close behind him. He stood for a moment out of sight of the computer screen, breathing deeply, then he walked swiftly over to the chair and sat down. ‘Sarek,’ he said, glancing towards the screen. No matter how hard he tried, he simply could not bring himself to look directly at his father, even through the defence of a computer screen.

‘Spock,’ Sarek replied in a level voice. ‘I am gratified that you have decided to speak to me.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Spock said instinctively, his eyes studying the desk in front of him intently.

‘You are not well, Spock,’ Sarek stated.

‘No, sir,’ he whispered. Fear was welling up in his chest, his feelings towards his father becoming confused with the subservient relationship he had been forced to play out in the prison.

‘Spock, what was done to you in that prison?’ Sarek asked, almost to himself.

Spock opened his mouth. He had to reply, but he didn’t know what to say. Finally he managed to whisper, ‘I was raped, sir.’

He sat, trembling, waiting for the reprimand for the use of that word, but none came. The pause was almost unendurable. He glanced up slowly, and saw that Sarek’s own eyes were downcast.

‘How many times?’ Sarek asked finally. ‘By whom?’

Spock closed his eyes, trying to stop his hands from shaking. ‘By the guards, sir,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t know how many times. I’m sorry…’

‘This happened regularly?’

Spock nodded silently. He felt as if sobs were going to explode out of him, but he couldn’t lose control so badly in front of his father. ‘I am sorry…’ he whispered finally.

After a long silence, his father said, ‘Spock, you have no reason to apologise. I imagine you had no logical means of resistance.’

‘No, sir,’ Spock said almost inaudibly, shaking his head.

‘Spock,’ his father said clearly, and he raised his head a little. ‘Every means you have of overcoming your pain is in your own mind,’ he said firmly. ‘Do not expect healing to come quickly – but it will come.’

‘Yes, sir,’ he whispered.

‘Once you have healed the shell, it may be easier to heal the soul,’ Sarek continued.

Spock touched a hand absent-mindedly to his shaven head. It would be good to be able to rid himself of what had become a uniform of his imprisonment – his controlled, shaven, scarred outer layer that reflected nothing of his own desires. Sarek was right. Perhaps if he could restore the image he presented to others at least his mental pain would be his own, private pain. At the moment, seeing himself brought only disgust to his mind.

‘I – _detest_ the shell,’ he said in a trembling voice. He could hardly bear even to look at his fingers on the desk.

‘Meditate,’ Sarek said firmly. ‘Move away from your physical body. Let the doctors concern themselves with that. Your mental processes are flexible – you _can_ heal them.’

‘Yes, sir,’ he said. He continued to stare at the desk before him, tracing the grain of the wood veneer with his eyes, studying its whorls and ripples with a fierce intensity.

‘I will speak to you again in two days, Spock,’ Sarek said. ‘Perhaps by then you will find yourself able to look at me.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Spock said. He should have felt annoyed at that statement, but it was some small comfort to have a goal to reach. ‘Thank you, father,’ he managed.

Then Sarek cut the communication, and the screen went black. Spock took in a deep, shuddering breath, and laid his head down on his folded arms on the desk, struggling to control the unbidden sobs that were rising in his throat.

A hand touched his shoulder, and he jerked back so fast his chair almost fell over, his entire body becoming rigid, the sobs freezing in his chest.

‘Spock,’ Jim said soothingly. ‘Spock, it’s all right.’

Spock slumped with the sudden release of tension, falling forward into Kirk’s arms, the sobs racking through him. A small part of him worried about the amount of noise he was making, about his lack of control – but he could not stop the sobs no matter how hard he tried. They seemed to go on forever, until finally he was simply heaving in jerking, gasping breaths, his hands clenched unconsciously on the fabric of Kirk’s top, his face buried against his chest. His eyes were stinging with wet heat, and he closed them against the unaccustomed feeling.

‘Come on,’ Kirk murmured, pulling him to his feet.

He followed wordlessly, his eyes still closed, clinging onto Jim’s arm as if it was the only thing connecting him to life. Then Jim was settling him into his bed in the ward and pulling the covers up over him, and he fell asleep to the feeling of his hand stroking his arm up and down in a smooth, rhythmical action.


	9. Chapter 9

When he woke Jim was no longer there, but McCoy was sitting by his bed reading something on the computer screen there. Spock blinked his eyes open and closed, trying to read what was written there, but it was so long since he had seen a written word he found it difficult to concentrate on the lines.

McCoy turned to see he was awake, waiting a moment for Spock to speak, but Spock could not bring himself to open the conversation.

‘Hi,’ the doctor said eventually with a smile. ‘You’ve slept well.’

Spock nodded mutely, focussing on the doctor and trying to persuade himself to look at least in the direction of his face.

‘I’ve been waiting for you to wake up. I wanted to review your treatment with you.’

‘Y-yes, of course, sir,’ Spock said hesitantly. The idea of having a choice in his treatment was simply bizarre.

‘Do you want a moment to wake up first?’

Spock shook his head, then forced himself to answer, ‘No. Now is fine.’

‘Okay. First things first. Would you rather be in the ward, or in a private room? Christine said you seemed thrown by the size of the room when you woke up last night.’

Spock glanced around the ward. Part of him wanted to be in the privacy of a private room, where there was no chance of anyone else seeing him. But another part of him felt terror at the idea of being returned to a small, closed room like his cell. He was not sure how he would react if a male crewmember came into a private room when he was alone.

‘Here, for now, sir,’ he said finally. ‘I will grow used to the space.’

‘Okay, that’s fine,’ McCoy nodded. He had stopped admonishing Spock for calling him  _sir_ – it was less deliberately aimed towards him than just the instinct to slip the word into every sentence to avoid punishment. He would grow out of it, slowly.

‘Now, your diet,’ McCoy continued. ‘You haven’t eaten solid food for seventeen months, Spock, so you can’t just start eating normally. I’ve analysed your stomach contents and worked out what you’ve been consuming. I’m going to replace the meat you’ve been eating with synthetic meat proteins at first, and gradually wean you back to a properly vegetarian diet. I’ll give you extra vitamin supplements, and also some extra fats and oils to help restore your weight and your brain health. At first your diet will be restricted to very simple, blended foods – soups, basically – and we’ll add more texture and flavour as time goes on.’

Spock nodded. It was hard to imagine eating real, solid food, so the idea of beginning with soups did not seem like a hardship.

‘I’ve got a meal waiting here for you,’ the doctor said, waving his hand towards a trolley with an insulated bowl on it. ‘You haven’t eaten anything since we got you back. Want a go at it?’

Spock turned his eyes to the bowl as McCoy removed the lid. It looked disturbingly like the food he had been served in the prison – perhaps a little thicker, but much the same texture and colour. He flicked his eyes to the doctor, then back to the food, then reached out his hand tentatively towards the bowl.

‘Just let me know if it’s completely unpalatable,’ McCoy said as he lifted the bowl. ‘There’s a couple of different choices you can try. There’s a spoon here, Spock,’ he added, as the Vulcan began to raise the bowl to his lips. As Spock hesitated he said, ‘Sorry. Don’t worry about that for now. Just have a taste.’

‘No. No, I must do it properly,’ Spock murmured, picking the spoon up and running his fingers over it as if he needed to fully remind himself of what the object was. He dipped the spoon into the soup and touched it to his lips, but then he recoiled. ‘It’s – hot,’ he said hesitantly.

‘It’s not too hot, is it?’ McCoy asked in concern.

‘I – have not felt food – ’ He thought, and then continued, ‘No, not just food. I have not felt  _anything_ this warm since my incarceration. The warmest thing I encountered was – other bodies.’

McCoy glanced at him, trying not to think about the implications of that statement. ‘Can you manage with it, or do you want me to take it and cool it down?’ he asked.

‘I shall try,’ Spock murmured, raising the spoon again. He took in a tiny sip, letting the tissues of his mouth become accustomed to the feeling of heat. Then the taste came through, and he almost gagged.

‘Spock, are you all right?’ McCoy asked in concern.

Spock pressed his lips together, forcing himself to swallow.

‘Is it that bad?’

‘I – do not know… It – tastes.’

He lifted the spoon again, taking another sip. The heat seemed more natural this time, but the taste was overwhelming. Still, he had no thought of refusing to eat it. He had been trained out of that. He swallowed again and again, trying to make the mouthfuls larger just so that he would be finished sooner. But suddenly the churning of his stomach was too much, and he retched, spilling the food he had just eaten down his front and onto the bed. Immediately he reacted, cowering away from the doctor and putting his hands over his head to protect it.

‘Don’t worry,’ McCoy said quickly, trying react to Spock’s panic with quiet calm. ‘I’ll clean it up and get you some fresh clothes.’

Spock uncoiled slowly, looking suspiciously towards the doctor.

‘I’m guessing that wasn’t well received in the prison,’ McCoy said, turning to get another top out of the drawer by the bed.

Spock shook his head.

‘Don’t worry,’ McCoy said again. ‘We’ll just try to make it a little thinner, a little blander next time.’

‘No,’ Spock murmured, picking the spoon up again and filling it from the bowl. ‘There is nothing wrong with it. It must be psychological. I must overcome it.’

He resolutely took another mouthful, ignoring the taste of the vomit already in his mouth.

‘Spock, you don’t have to do this,’ McCoy said firmly. ‘At least have some water – wash your mouth out.’

He swallowed, then nodded. ‘Please. Yes, water, please.’

‘Here,’ McCoy said, handing him a cup.

He drank the water, then reached for the bowl again.

‘Spock, wait,’ the doctor said, taking the bowl firmly and putting it back on the trolley. ‘Change your top, and let me get rid of this blanket. You can’t eat with that all over you.’

‘Yes, of course,’ he murmured, fumbling with his top as McCoy replaced the blanket.

‘Now, here’s a bowl in case you need it,’ the doctor said, putting a sick bowl on his lap. ‘Try it more slowly this time. Don’t force yourself. You’ve got all the time in the world.’

Spock nodded silently, raising the spoon again and taking another mouthful. The meal was a little cooler now, and the taste of it seemed a little more palatable. He swallowed slowly, giving the food time to settle in his stomach.

‘Better?’ McCoy asked him.

He nodded, taking another mouthful.

McCoy waited in silence as Spock finished the bowl, watching him cautiously for any signs of nausea.

‘Was that all right, then?’ he asked as Spock put the spoon down and carefully put the bowl aside.

‘Yes, thank you,’ Spock murmured.

‘Now,’ McCoy said carefully. ‘Now you’re comfortable, and you’ve got some solid food in your stomach – I thought it would be a good idea for you to talk about some of your experiences with me.’

Spock glanced up briefly, his entire body suddenly clenching with tension.

‘I – do not believe that will help,’ he said tightly.

‘Spock, most studies have shown that it helps to talk about things like this,’ McCoy said firmly.

Spock raised his head, almost meeting McCoy’s eyes, and then looking away again. He still could barely bring himself to meet a person’s eyes, especially if that person was male.

‘Studies involving humans, no doubt,’ Spock said, using a hint of the acerbity he had always used to McCoy in the past.

McCoy was silent for a moment, then he nodded. ‘Yes, I admit most of them are focussed on humans. But not all. There is evidence that it can be just as helpful for Vulcans to enter counselling.’

‘Vulcans do _not_ speak of such things,’ Spock said firmly, just an edge of danger entering his tone.

‘You are half human,’ McCoy reminded him.

‘I had not forgotten that fact.’

‘I really think it would be good for you to discuss what happened, Spock, either with me, or with a counsellor if you preferred. I know there’s a very good man on Starbase 16, and that’s not that far away.’

Spock’s hands clenched tightly, his knuckles standing out in peaks under the thin skin. ‘Doctor, what form of imbecility makes you believe that I would like to talk to a  _stranger_ , or even to you, about how a prison guard came into my cell every few days for fifteen  _months_ , and raped me while I lay shackled on the floor?’

‘Spock, it really will help you,’ McCoy pressed. ‘You need a release.’

‘Really, doctor?’ Spock asked, some of his previous confidence entering his voice purely because of his overwhelming anger. ‘What would you like to hear? Would you like me to talk about how I threw aside my dignity and begged him for mercy? Or how it felt that first time that he fixed my mouth open and rammed into it, and ejaculated into my throat? How I was given the choice of pleasuring him or suffocating? Or each time he held my legs up and entered my rectum and left me lying with his semen dribbling out of my body? Or when he attached serrated clips to my genitals and lips and nipples and passed currents through them, because it made the intercourse more exciting for him? How he came back, time after time, and tormented me and shackled me and satiated himself in my body? How about how I pleasured him to avoid the physical pain of being touched by his painstick? How I endured a week trapped inside a box where I could neither stand nor sit when I fought him? How I sobbed and pleaded when only a week ago he injected me with stimulants and fellated me and forced me to bugger him before taking me where I lay?’

‘Spock – ’ McCoy tried to break in, but the Vulcan did not stop speaking.

‘Shall I tell you how the other guards abused me too?’ he asked, his hands clenching and unclenching furiously. ‘How it feels to wait on all fours on the floor like an animal and hold yourself there while you are raped from behind? To be lifted and pawed and manipulated like a piece of meat? Shall I describe how I felt when six of them came into my cell and spent five hours using me? Would you like to know what it feels like to have a man crush you to the floor and rut into your mouth while another one forces himself between your legs? To think it will _never, never_ stop because each time one is finished with you another is standing in his place? Do you want to know what it’s like to be forced to eat your own faeces, or someone else’s, to swallow their semen and urine and thank them for the pleasure? How it feels to be buggered with a painstick in front of an entire room of prisoners and guards? How – how – ’

Spock dragged in a breath that suddenly turned from breathing into choking on sobs, and he dragged his hands over his face, trying furiously to force the emotions away.

‘Does it help, Doctor?’ he asked raggedly through his hands. ‘Does that knowledge help you understand?’

‘I hope saying it out loud helps _you_ , Spock,’ McCoy said, touching his arm. ‘All I want to do is help you.’

Spock moved his hand to the scars on his wrist, falling back into the old pattern of agitating the wounds there to push away the emotional pain. But he managed to stop himself just before his fingernails touched, and he looked about uselessly, trying to find some way of easing his emotional turmoil

He moved forward suddenly, letting his head fall onto McCoy’s chest. McCoy put his arms about the thin back hesitantly, unused to Spock wanting such physical contact, especially after such a bitter outburst.

‘I don’t _want_ to remember,’ Spock whispered. ‘I don’t want to go over it, day after day.’

‘But you do go over it, don’t you? You can’t help it.’

Spock shook his head, silent sobs wracking his body. McCoy couldn’t help but be overwhelmed with sympathy as he took in the image he made, underweight to the point of emaciation, his head covered only by a light stubble that had grown since the last shaving, his shoulders shaking with unrepressed emotion.

‘You can’t repress it, Spock,’ McCoy told him gently. ‘You have to work through it, so you can put it behind you.’

‘Not like this,’ Spock whispered. ‘Too much pain…’

‘You have to find a way to deal with it, Spock. Is there any Healer on Vulcan who could – ’

Spock shook his head violently. ‘Vulcan barely acknowledges that such crimes exist. We don’t speak of it.’

McCoy sighed, stroking Spock’s back automatically as he held him. He was still shaking, and the doctor could feel the Vulcan’s tears soaking onto his shoulder.

‘I see it all the time,’ he whispered abruptly. ‘I feel him touching me, I dream of it. I see his face when I look at other people, I glimpse him in corners, in doorways, I sense him behind me when I know I’m alone. I cannot rid myself of the feeling of his hands on my body, of him inside me, of his mouth on me…’

‘Spock, can you see that it’s helping you to tell me about this?’ McCoy asked him softly, wary of pushing him too far.

Finally Spock nodded. ‘There is – some measure of relief.’

‘Well, that’s good,’ McCoy said gently. ‘Now, I don’t want to push you to talk any more today, but I think we should try again in the next few days. But – I’d like you to try to meditate. I think the sooner you can start again the better. It’ll help you immensely.’

‘I don’t have my meditation statue,’ Spock murmured.

‘You don’t _have_ to have that do you? I’ve seen you meditate without it before.’

‘But I – I can’t – I… I don’t feel able – ’ he faltered.

‘I can get a light for you to focus on,’ McCoy offered. ‘Maybe even get your statue up here. That’s not a problem.’

‘But – ’

‘Spock, what is it?’ he asked. ‘Tell me.’

‘I am – ’ He hesitated, then said, ‘I – do not feel safe enough – to withdraw into myself.’

‘I’ll stay with you the whole time,’ the doctor promised. ‘I’ll watch for you. No one will come near you.’

‘You cannot protect me from my own mind,’ Spock said in a low voice, almost inaudible.

‘Spock,’ McCoy said firmly, touching his arm. ‘You’ve had almost twenty-four hours to take in those vitamins and minerals I gave you. You’re already showing more control than you were when we beamed you up. You’re more lucid, more coherent. And like I said – I’ll be here. At the first sign of distress I can call you back and you can turn to me, and I’ll _help_ you, I promise. But you need to meditate – you need to start to heal yourself. I can’t do that for you.’

Spock looked up at him briefly, then nodded silently. ‘I will try. I don’t need a light.’


	10. Chapter 10

It was over a week after his rescue when the storm finally broke. Kirk came into the sick bay ward and sat down next to Spock’s bed, his face grave and lined with stress. Spock glanced up at him, forcing himself to look at Kirk’s eyes, to register the worry there.

‘Something is wrong,’ he said tonelessly, but his heart faltered at Kirk’s expression.

Jim hesitated, rubbing a fist across his eyes, pushing his light brown hair back off his forehead.

‘Yeah, something’s wrong,’ he acknowledged finally. ‘Darkartia contacted the Federation over your escape from their prison the day after we sprung you out of there. I’ve been trying to stave it off, but now all hell’s breaking loose.’

Spock swallowed subtly, pulling the blankets a little further up his chest.

‘Darkartia’s threatening military action, Starfleet’s hounding me for explanations.’ He paused, then said softly, ‘Both sides are demanding your return, Spock.’

Spock closed his eyes briefly, a look of nausea washing over his face. Then, finally, he nodded, and said blankly, ‘I had reconciled myself to my imprisonment. When must I leave?’

‘I’m not sending you back, Spock! Good God, don’t believe I’d ever do that,’ Kirk exclaimed. ‘I’d rather take this whole ship into hiding than deliver you back to be raped and tortured and God knows what else.’

‘And if Darkartia uses force?’

‘We’ve been high-tailing it away from Darkartia for the last week. I’d be more concerned about fleet vessels than Darkartian ones right now. That’s why we need to convince the Federation that they can’t condemn you to more of the treatment you experienced there. They’ve been given a description by the Darkartians of prisons with soft beds, gyms, work programmes, recreation areas with plants and trees. They think you’ve escaped from something close to a holiday camp.’

Spock could think of no response to that description – it was so ludicrously far from the truth that he had experienced.

‘Spock, McCoy’s putting together all the medical evidence he collected from you, and writing a detailed report on your mental condition,’ Kirk said gravely. ‘But we’ll need more. I – God, I didn’t want to ask you to do this so soon – but I need you to write a statement about your incarceration, from the moment you were captured to the moment we beamed you out. It needs to be as detailed as possible – as much as you can remember.’

Spock nodded slowly. He had no problem remembering that first time he had been assaulted in detail – so much so it was like being immersed in the reality of it. He could delineate each attack since, recall each incident of violence, each punishment with the painstick. He could trace the growth of his own subjugation, the wearing down of his pride, the insidious spread of fear and automatic submission. But the thought of committing all that to record – of physically writing it down and having the pictures and written record of his shame and humiliation and indignity passed between high-ranking members of the Federation for scrutiny – that was almost too much to bear. It was better, so much better, than the idea of spending perhaps one hundred and fifty years in that cruel, soul-destroying incarceration – but just now it was the last thing he wanted to do.

‘It will stay as confidential as possible,’ Kirk promised. ‘I’ll make sure of that.’

‘You will read it,’ Spock pointed out. ‘And Dr McCoy.’

‘Yes,’ Kirk nodded. ‘We’ll have to, since essentially we’re representing your defence. McCoy definitely has to, since there may be things in your report that he can back up with medical evidence, once he knows about them.’

‘Then more physical examinations?’ Spock murmured almost to himself.

‘Yes, probably,’ Kirk acknowledged softly. ‘I’m sorry, Spock. I’m sorry this whole thing is so damn invasive.’

‘It cannot be as invasive as…’ Spock began, then trailed into silence.

‘You’ll write the report?’ Kirk pressed him gently.

Spock took a deep breath, then inclined his head, once. ‘Yes, sir,’ he murmured, his eyes fixed on the blanket under which he lay. ‘It is the only logical option. When do you need it by?’

‘As soon as possible, Spock,’ he said apologetically.

‘Then – I will begin now,’ he said resolutely.

‘Want me to leave you to it?’

He glanced up briefly. ‘Please, Jim. But – w-would you be ready, if I call you, to come?’

‘Yes, of course, Spock. Whatever I’m doing – don’t worry about it. I’ll come.’

  


((O))

  


It was two days later before Kirk brought the response to his report. He sat down on the chair beside Spock’s bed and put a datapadd on the shelf.

‘You’re safe – for now,’ was the first thing he said.

‘Starfleet have examined the reports?’ Spock asked cautiously.

Kirk nodded. ‘Starfleet medical have ratified McCoy’s evidence. T’Shel of Vulcan has ratified the psychological validity of your report. You – are believed. Darkartia isn’t.’

Spock nodded slowly, then looked up at Kirk. ‘But – ’ he said. ‘There is a  _but_ , is there not?’

‘But – the Federation is terrified of provoking a war with Darkatia. They can’t send you back there – don’t worry about that,’ he said quickly. ‘If nothing else, Vulcan is threatening to withdraw financial and political support from the Federation if they try to send you back.’

Spock looked at him, the surprise on his face showing that he was still not in full control of his emotional responses.

‘Thank your father,’ Kirk said with a smile. ‘I think Sarek holds far more influence on Vulcan than I ever suspected. He is – _furious_ – about your treatment.’

‘I very much doubt that my father is furious,’ Spock murmured.

‘Then he’s as close as a Vulcan can be,’ Kirk told him. ‘And that makes him far more dangerous than any angry human ever would be.’

‘He has seen the evidence?’ Spock asked.

‘Yes, Spock,’ Kirk said softly. ‘We’ve tried to restrict it as much as possible, but it seemed to your advantage to let Sarek get his hands on it.’

Spock nodded numbly, thinking of the photographs and graphic descriptions that Sarek had had access to. Logically, it should not have bothered him – but it did, and he could not deny it.

‘But,’ Kirk said again. ‘Like I said, the Federation is terrified of war with Darkartia, so they want to appease the Darkartians as far as possible. The Darkartians say they want to examine the evidence themselves to verify it. They say that if they can verify it themselves then they will rescind their demands for your return and take action against the prison you were in. They’re trying to pass the buck, basically – they’ll put all blame on individuals within that one prison, the Federation won’t take any proceedings against them and they won’t take any against the Federation.’

‘ _I_ am the evidence,’ Spock said doubtfully. ‘Does this mean – ’

‘They have agreed to a meeting between you and a Darkartian delegation, here on the _Enterprise_. You will have to speak to them – possibly be examined by one of their doctors.’

The meeting seemed to approach with startling speed. Spock was spending every day with McCoy talking through every clinging, mind-crippling memory, letting his regurgitation of the experience purge his mind of it. He was heartily tired of talking about what had happened to him, but he had to acknowledge that every moment of discussion and analysis helped him to rationalise his experiences and in some way to neutralise them. He had no desire, however, to speak about the experiences in front of a Darkartian panel. The one overriding motivation for him to get up and dress that morning was the knowledge that this interview would settle everything once and for all. He would have done almost anything to rid himself of the threat of being returned to that prison.

He was in his own private room now, at least, and he could change without having to pull out a screen and worry about random crew members catching a glimpse of him. But as he slipped into his trousers and tunic his clothes didn’t seem like enough. They clung too tightly to the contours of his body. He wanted to wear one of his thick robes, with the hood pulled up over his head and as far forward over his face as it would go and the sleeves down over his hands – anything to hide his body from his or anyone else’s gaze. But this was a Starfleet hearing, and he could not wear anything other than Starfleet dress uniform. He could not hide his face and stare at the floor as if he was ashamed, no matter how much shame was actually running through his mind.

‘Are you ready, Spock?’ McCoy asked softly as he ran his hands one more time down the front of his tunic. Spock wished that Kirk could have been there, but he had to be welcoming the Darkartian officials and showing them to the briefing room where the meeting was to take place.

‘Oh – yes – yes, I am quite ready,’ Spock nodded, realising that McCoy was waiting for a reply.

‘Want to check – ’ the doctor began, reaching out to open the swivelling closet door to expose the mirror.

‘No,’ Spock said quickly. He had largely avoided seeing his own reflection since his release, and now did not seem the time to challenge that particular aversion

‘Well, you look fine, anyway,’ McCoy reassured him. He had been trying for days to gently persuade Spock to look at himself, especially now he had undergone dental restoration, gained weight and had scars removed, but he did not want to labour the point.

  


((O))

  


They were already seated there when Spock entered the room – just Jim on one side of the desk, and a small cluster of Darkartians on the other, all clad in the dark uniforms that Spock had grown so accustomed to in the prison. He hesitated in the doorway, his lungs seeming to freeze for a second. In order to preserve his privacy, only Jim and McCoy were to be present here on the side of Starfleet, but he momentarily wished for twenty other officers to overwhelm the Darkartian presence. He had not expected Darkartian prison staff to be here – just officials from their legal system.

‘You all right, Spock?’ McCoy murmured from beside him.

Spock nodded stiffly, and forced himself to proceed into the room. When he looked properly he realised that only three of them were in prison uniform – the other five were dressed in civilian clothes. He moved round to Kirk’s side of the desk and sat down, finally raising his eyes to the men opposite.

His heart faltered as his gaze fell on the prison staff, and recognised the faces before him. For a moment he felt as if he was utterly without the ability to think, and then he forced himself back to composure.

‘Are you ready, Spock?’ Kirk asked in a low voice.

‘Yes, sir,’ Spock said, forcing the words through a throat tight with emotion. No matter what tactics they were playing to unsettle him, he would have to get through this.

The questions seemed to come at him without him having any consciousness of what they were saying, and he answered with little consciousness of his own replies. His eyes stayed fixed on the report on the table under the central man’s hand – the report that contained the photographs and details of his injuries. He could not help but catch glimpses of those photographs as the man flicked through the report, and he was sure that the man’s lingering on certain images was deliberate. He felt as if he was slipping in and out of control and awareness. He wasn’t sure how long he could sit here in front of these men. Then Kirk seemed to realise what was happening, and he said tersely, ‘Mr Ahnen, would you let me have the report for a moment?’

Reluctantly the man passed it over. Kirk didn’t move to open it – he just placed his hand firmly on top as if to hold the images safe inside.

Spock came back to a moment of clarity, as the man said, ‘And you say you suffered violence?’

Spock closed his eyes briefly, a flash of remembrance forcing itself into his mind. ‘Yes, sir,’ he nodded sombrely. ‘Extreme violence.’

The man shook his head. ‘Impossible.’

‘It occurred. I assure you, sir, it is quite possible,’ Spock replied flatly. He could not shake away the recurring flashes of sensation – of himself hanging from his wrists with his head covered by a bag, spasming each time a new method of inflicting pain was tried out on his body.

‘Would you care to describe this violence?’

‘No, sir,’ Spock said firmly.

‘It’s all been described in the report,’ Kirk said impatiently. ‘Commander Spock has been put through quite enough – he doesn’t need to repeat it again.’

‘Very well,’ he said slowly. ‘And was this violence, this sexual abuse you _say_ you suffered, carried out by one person, or more than one?’

Spock flicked his gaze up briefly, his eyes flitting towards the guard to the man’s right, and then resolutely back to the table. He swallowed hard, then said, ‘There was more than one, but the majority was carried out by one person.’

‘Again, this is all in the report,’ Kirk cut in. ‘There’s no need for Spock to repeat it.’

‘Why didn’t you fight?’ the man asked, ignoring the captain. ‘If you disliked what was happening, why didn’t you refuse to give yourself up to it?’

Spock closed his eyes, swallowing as if he was going to be sick. ‘I – could not, sir,’ he said, his tone becoming more desperate. ‘I was compelled to obey, through pain or through restraints. I had no power…’

‘Let me see that report again,’ the man muttered.

He reached out and Kirk slid it across the table to him. He hated exposing what was in it to anyone else, but there was no way of refusing.

The silence dragged on as the man looked intently through the pages. Kirk glanced sideways at Spock. He looked pale and distracted, and even though his forehead was sheened with a light film of sweat his lips seemed to be dry. He looked as if he was about to be sick.

Finally he turned towards Kirk slightly, and asked softly, ‘Sir, may I be excused for a moment?’

‘Of course, Spock, go on,’ he said, nodding towards the door.

Spock rose to his feet and moved stiffly to the door. Kirk glanced across at McCoy, and said in an undertone, ‘Go check on him, Bones.’

McCoy stepped out into the corridor and found it empty. He hesitated a second, then walked down to the nearby bathroom and opened the door. Spock was inside, leaning heavily against the wall with his eyes closed, his hands pressed against his mouth. There was a scent of vomit in the air. McCoy silently took a cup from the dispenser and filled it with cold water.

‘Here, drink this,’ he said softly. ‘It’ll help.’

Spock opened his eyes slowly, focussing on McCoy as if he was coming back from another place. After a moment he said confusedly, ‘Of – course, Doctor. Thank you.’

He took the cup with stiff fingers, seeming to consider it for a moment before taking a sip.

‘Are you all right to go back in there?’ McCoy asked. ‘You don’t have to.’

‘No, I must,’ he murmured.

‘You don’t have to do _anything_ you don’t want to.’

Spock met his eyes for a moment. ‘We both know that is not true,’ he said. ‘I have sworn an oath to Starfleet.’

‘Starfleet be damned,’ McCoy said furiously. ‘It’s not as if Starfleet bothered to get you out of that prison. Now, _I’m_ telling you, you don’t have to go back in there – on my authority as the chief medical officer of this ship.’

‘I – must,’ Spock said firmly. ‘You must understand that, McCoy. I – need to face what is in there.’

‘Yes,’ the doctor said slowly. ‘I _do_ understand. I – just want to spare you…’

‘I know,’ Spock said.

He exhaled slowly, then turned to the basins and splashed water over his face, then dried it carefully with a towel, always being careful not to catch sight of himself in the mirror. His instinct was to be sure his hair was smooth, but it was still too short to be disordered, so he pulled his top straight instead, and turned to the door.

‘Doctor?’ he asked.

‘Coming,’ McCoy said, following him. Just before the door back into the briefing room opened he touched Spock’s arm warmly. ‘Just remember, you can leave any time you want to.’

  


((O))

Then,  _finally_ , it was over. Spock wasn’t entirely sure of what had been said, or even if anything had been decided, but people were getting to their feet and moving toward the exit. He didn’t get up.

‘Spock?’ Kirk asked in concern.

‘I will come in a moment,’ Spock said.

‘I’ll wait,’ Kirk said warmly, turning back towards his chair.

‘No – I – I just want a moment – to myself,’ Spock said carefully, and Kirk nodded. He touched his arm, then followed the others across the room. At this moment Spock didn’t feel as if his legs would support him. He waited until the last of the party was heading to the door, then leant forward onto the desk, resting his head onto his arms. He exhaled slowly, trying to recover some composure. But he became aware of the door opening again, and he looked up, expecting it to be Kirk or McCoy standing there. But it wasn’t…

He stood up, pressing his palms of the desk for a moment before letting go of that illusory security and straightening up. The man came across the room to him, a slight smile on his face. Spock stared at him. When there were others in the room there had been the security that Tilt-nose dared not expose his identity. Now the two of them were alone all of that protection had gone away. He didn’t know what to do, where to put his hands, where to go. Tilt-nose kept coming closer. Walking around him and leaving the room didn’t even enter his head. It had never been an option before. And now he was so close he could smell him, and feel his breath on his face.

‘I’ve missed you, prisoner,’ Tilt-nose said, reaching out a hand towards Spock’s face.

Spock took a step backwards, resisting the impulse to put his hands protectively in front of his body. ‘I have a name – an identity,’ he said in a voice he was struggling to keep steady. ‘I am no longer a prisoner.’

‘Yes, I know. I do too. You are Spock. I am Nelim. Spock and Nelim.’

‘Do _not_ connect us in such a way,’ Spock said vehemently.

‘But we did so like to be – connected,’ he said softly. ‘You grew to like me, didn’t you?’

Spock stepped backwards again, but his back was against the wall, and he couldn’t go any further. Helpless misery was washing over him.

‘We’re alone now,’ Tilt-nose continued. ‘You don’t need to pretend you don’t know me. Come on…’ He touched his hand to Spock’s head, running his fingers through the short, dark hair that was growing back so slowly. ‘Black,’ he murmured. ‘I thought it would be black. It suits you.’

Spock turned his head, trying to move it away from the man’s hand, but it was pressed against the wall. Tilt-nose was stroking his cheek, so gently his fingers felt like silk. He breathed in a warm billow of his breath, and almost gasped at the reminder of that scent that had become so familiar to him. Tilt-nose stepped back, as if to consider him. Spock clasped his hands together uncertainly, then pulled at his cuffs, trying unconsciously to cover up the little exposed flesh he had.

‘You don’t need to do that,’ Tilt-nose said softly. ‘I know you too well, no matter how many clothes you have covering your skin. You’re my special one – my exquisite specimen. I know that little mole, there,’ he said, touching his finger to Spock’s top, precisely where a small mole sat on the skin beneath. ‘I know about that scar there, on your side,’ he said, trailing his finger over it. ‘I know every shade of your skin, the patterns of your hair, the shape of your toenails.’

Spock closed his eyes in misery. Suddenly he could have been completely naked, and it would have made no difference. What use were clothes when this man saw him naked every time he looked at him?

Tilt-nose slipped his hand under Spock’s top to caress his flat belly. ‘You’re hot, aren’t you? I didn’t realise how warm you’d be in your own environment.’

‘Please,’ he began desperately. He wasn’t sure that he knew how to resist, after so long of being forbidden to. He looked sideways, seeing how close the intercom was, but Tilt-nose shook his head.

‘You don’t want to do that. You know what’ll happen if they find us together now, now you’re free. They’ll know you were willing. You’ll lose any case you had.’

‘I was never willing,’ Spock protested, but his voice was becoming less forceful. Tilt-nose’s hands were pushing down into the waistband of his trousers, loosening the fastenings, sliding round to caress his buttocks.

‘Kneel down – open your mouth for me.’

‘No…’ he protested, even as he obeyed.

Then suddenly the knowledge of how to resist came to him, and he began to get back onto his feet. But abruptly there was a blow, and he was lying on his back on the floor with Tilt-nose kneeling on his outspread arms, holding his head and pulling it up towards his exposed erection, pressing on just the right bit of his jaw to cause his mouth to open to stop the pain. Then as Tilt-nose entered his mouth with a satisfied moan there was a shout of raw anger and a rush of noise, and suddenly Tilt-nose was no longer on him – he was ten clear feet away, pinned against the wall as Kirk slammed his fist again and again into his face. As he slumped Kirk simply dropped him where he was and came to Spock.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked urgently. ‘Did he – ’

‘He did not have time,’ Spock replied in a voice that was almost a whisper, automatically refastening his clothing. ‘You came…’

‘I was worried about you – then I saw he was missing too. Spock, was he the one who – ?’

Spock nodded silently, letting his eyes move to where Tilt-nose lay, red blood smeared over his nose and lips. The amount of times he had wanted to do that to the man were countless, but he felt a curious anxiety about the idea of him dying there from his injuries.

‘Good God, and he was sitting opposite you all that time! Why in God’s name didn’t you say something, Spock?’

Spock shook his head, his eyes still fixed on the man on the floor. ‘I – have no logical reason to give you,’ he said slowly. ‘You should call Dr McCoy,’ he continued. ‘He could have concussion.’

‘Let him suffer,’ Kirk said viciously. ‘Let him bleed to death inside his skull.’

‘Jim,’ Spock said softly. ‘That will not help. You being accused of manslaughter will not help. Please, call McCoy.’

‘Spock, you almost sound as if you _want_ to help him.’

‘He – took care of me,’ Spock said quietly.

‘Spock, he _raped_ you, over and over.’

‘Yes,’ Spock nodded. ‘But he also comforted me when I was at my lowest, spared me from worse violence from other guards, procured treatment for me when I was sick. He – was the only one who was there, Jim. You were not there. McCoy was not there. Starfleet did not help me. He _did_.’

‘Spock, look,’ Kirk said, touching his finger to the tender place on Spock’s temple where Tilt-nose had hit him. He showed his hand to Spock, and he saw the green blood on it. ‘Is that taking care of you? Hitting you so you bleed, then forcing you to – do that to him?’

‘ _Please_ , Jim, call him,’ Spock repeated desperately. ‘Or allow me to call him.’

Kirk looked at the man again, taking in the pallor of his face and the limpness of his body. ‘All right,’ he nodded, moving over to the intercom and summoning both a medical team and security guards. ‘Happy?’ he asked Spock.

‘It is the only thing you could have done,’ Spock said faintly. ‘My feelings in the matter are irrelevant.’

‘Spock, do you – ’ Kirk began, then trailed off, shaking his head. ‘No, don’t worry about it.’

The atmosphere in the room had suddenly become oddly uncomfortable, and Kirk got to his feet, moving toward the door and muttering, ‘Where  _is_ that medical team?’

‘It has only been thirty seconds since you called,’ Spock pointed out quietly.

Kirk turned back to him, meeting his eyes briefly, then looking away again. ‘I’ll take him myself. I’ll probably meet them on their way down. Like you said, it’s best to get him the treatment he needs.’

‘I will carry him,’ Spock said, his eyes cast down towards where the man lay. ‘He’s heavy, and I am stronger.’

He knelt down, carefully refastening the man’s clothes before lifting him in his arms in one smooth movement. He moved to the door. Kirk watched him for a moment without moving. Spock almost seemed to be hugging the man to his body. ‘He’s heavy’, Spock had said. Not ‘he looks heavy’, but ‘he  _is_ heavy’. He hated to think about how Spock knew so precisely how much of a burden that body would be, but he could not help but dwell on it.

  


((O))

  


‘Is he still out there, Bones?’ Kirk muttered, looking carefully round the door from the treatment room into the anteroom. Spock had carried the Darkartian guard all the way to sick bay, but he had gone into the anteroom as soon as he had placed him on the table, his face drawn with unspoken emotion.

‘I haven’t heard him leave,’ McCoy said.

‘He is,’ Kirk said, turning back into the room. ‘He’s just standing there, like he’s waiting for a shuttle to come in. Bones – he’s been hanging around here since we brought that man in. I thought this’d be the last place he’d want to be.’

‘Maybe, maybe not,’ McCoy shrugged. He was swabbing blood from the unconscious man’s face, trying with all his strength to ignore his rage at the man and simply treat him as he would any other patient. ‘It’s an odd situation for him, Jim. There must be things going on in his head that neither of us will ever understand.’

‘I know, but – ’ Kirk came to McCoy’s side, considering the unconscious man on the table before him. ‘Bones – is it possible – I mean – is it possible that – ’

‘What are you getting at, Jim?’

‘Spock’s never shown any inclination to – homosexuality, has he? Is it possible that – ’

‘Jim, rape can’t turn someone to a sexual orientation they didn’t have beforehand,’ McCoy said tiredly. ‘And no, Spock has never shown any inclination, in any tests or profiles, or just in the long time I’ve known him as a friend, toward homosexuality. Hell, I wouldn’t mind if he did. There’s nothing wrong with it.’

‘He seemed – I don’t know – There was something in the way he was acting toward that man, almost as if – he cared for him. I mean, for God’s sake, he sat there opposite him all through that meeting, and said nothing! And the way he’s hanging around now, like he’s anxious about his welfare.’

‘Well, he spent – what was it – fifteen months or more with that man being his sole company. As far as I can glean he was about the only person he was permitted to talk to – to touch even. Not like that, Jim,’ he said, as Kirk caught his gaze. ‘Yes, he forced him to do all sorts of things against his will, but there were also times when he just – comforted him.’

‘He must have spoken a lot to you about it,’ Kirk said, a tinge of jealousy in his voice.

‘As a patient to his doctor, yes,’ McCoy told him. ‘And I should remind you that this is all confidential, Jim. Spock has said he doesn’t mind me talking to you about it, but it can’t go further than that.’

‘Well, that goes without saying,’ Kirk said impatiently. ‘But that’s beside the point, Bones. You’re saying that he feels an affection for a man that raped him, tormented him, tortured him for months and months when he had no power to defend himself.’

‘You’re acting like he should react logically, Jim,’ McCoy smiled wanly. ‘There isn’t any logic to this, least of all for a man who’s been taught nothing _but_ logic all his life. Spock had everything stripped away from him – literally. He didn’t have a single person to turn to – except him. I guess he grew to depend on him, emotionally.’

‘I just – can’t understand it, Bones,’ Kirk said tiredly. ‘I feel nothing but hatred for that animal. Spock should feel the same, if he’s going to feel anything.’

‘You don’t own his feelings, Jim. Good God, Spock barely owns them at the moment. Try it this way, Jim. What if you had a lover who was always there, who comforted you and helped you and supported you to the point that you felt you couldn’t manage without them – and then they began to hurt you, abuse you, sexually even. What would you do then?

‘I’d leave,’ Kirk said instantly. ‘I wouldn’t stand for it.’

‘But if you’d got to the point where you felt – no – where you  _knew_ that you were nothing without them, that you couldn’t manage without them. You can’t leave them – how would you survive?’

‘But that’s not how it is with Spock. That man was never his lover.’

‘No, he didn’t do it in that order – but he made it so that he was the only person in that place that he could appeal to, or talk to, spend any time with. That’s a huge thing to someone condemned to solitary confinement for the rest of their life. What was he going to say? Don’t comfort me? Don’t talk to me? He had to cling to something in there. Now – this man’s going to come round in a minute – unless I keep him asleep. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not have to speak to him.’

Kirk glared at the unconscious face. ‘I think if he tries to open his mouth to me I might just kill him. Just – keep him under for now, Bones. I’ll arrange a place in the brig for him, and then I’ll go talk to the Darkartians. There’s one good thing in this at least – if they thought they had any claim on Spock before, they’ve certainly lost it now.’


	11. Epilogue

Within four weeks, it was all over – politically and legally at least. The Federation had given up the guard to the Darkartian authorities in return for a promise that any claim on Spock was rescinded, and that they would deal with the guard according to their own laws. It seemed to be far from over for Spock, however – although that was not surprising. Although he had been released from sick bay he was still off duty, and a long way from being pronounced fit to return to work. On this particular day he had been remarkably quiet, and when Kirk had come to look for him on coming off duty he had not found him either in sick bay or his quarters.

He finally found him sitting in the ship’s botanical lab, staring into the beds of plants with his fingers intertwined into a tangled bed of grass.

‘Spock?’ he asked curiously. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, quite,’ he said distractedly. ‘Jim, are we scheduled to stop at a Class M planet soon?’

‘Umm… We were supposed to be stopping over at the starbase on Juno 5, but I’m not sure what’s happening now. You wanted some time planetside?’

‘It is – a very long time – since I was outside.’

‘Yes, I suppose it is,’ Kirk nodded. Of course, the last time must have been that day that they beamed down to Darkartia and all of this nightmare had begun. ‘Spock, are you sure you’re all right?’ he pressed.

Spock nodded stiffly, then said, ‘It seems that you have been avoiding my company recently. I – do not know why.’

‘I guess I’ve been finding it hard, Spock. I can’t say that I understand your feelings towards that man. But – ’ He glanced up at the chronometer on the wall. ‘I suppose that’s all over now, as of – what – seven minutes ago? The execution was scheduled for 0700 their time, wasn’t it? He must be dead by now.’

Spock stiffened suddenly, standing and walking to the side of the room. His hands had been clenched so hard that he pulled clods of grass out of the bed as he moved, strewing it on the floor behind him. He stood with his face to the wall, his hands clenched into white fists.

‘Spock,’ Kirk said gently, coming up behind him. He saw that his shoulders were shaking, and he turned him around to see tears coursing down his expressionless face. ‘Surely you’re not crying for him?’

‘I – do not understand myself,’ he said in a shaking voice. ‘I _despise_ myself for such feelings. I cannot care for him, surely? But I can’t bear to think of him dead…’

‘It’s all right,’ Kirk said softly, taking him into his arms. ‘It doesn’t matter. You can’t help how you feel.’

‘I didn’t wish it to happen this way,’ he murmured. ‘I can have no resolution now. He will always be there…’

‘But he’s not – that’s the point. He can never touch you again.’

‘I – _do not_ agree with the taking of life,’ Spock said with an intense anger. ‘If I had agreed to return to the prison, he would not be dead.’  
‘ _No_ ,’ Kirk said firmly. ‘I don’t care what you could have agreed to – _I_ wouldn’t have allowed it. I couldn’t see you going back to that nightmare again.’

‘It was – quite unbearable,’ Spock murmured, his eyes staring into nothingness.

‘And he was part of it,’ Kirk reminded him. ‘He _hurt_ you, every day almost, didn’t he?’

Spock nodded silently. ‘But – he was all that I had,’ he said softly.

‘But he’s not now. You have me, and Bones, Scotty, Uhura – everyone on this ship who will offer you comfort and caring without demanding _that_ in return.

‘Yes,’ Spock said musingly. Finally he looked at Kirk. ‘Yes, that is true. Perhaps – if you can bear with my feelings – you could come with me to my quarters, and we could talk. I – feel – that I need to talk.’


End file.
